Ask HN: Are FAANG employees right for an early-stage startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are FAANG employees right for an early-stage startup?

21 pointsbethere22 comments

We're a SaaS startup and have raised a seed. And are debating who would make a better fit in startups as early employees.

FAANG or Full stack devs from startups

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No. Because these are now the "large companies" equivalent to IBM or any other mega-corporation. They haven't been "agile startups" in 1-2 decades so their employees aren't suited for anything but "large corporation" work. The majority of FAANG employees have NEVER experience a work environment that is akin to small startups and so they mostly are ill-suited to it.

There will always be exceptions but the demographics are no better than the general public: if there's 1% in the general population are suitable for startups, then only 1% of FAANG employees are suitable for startups.

I'd never assume anything just because they worked for a FAANG.

BTW I worked at HP and honestly most HP alums I know who were "lifers" would be no more suitable. Only if they were in certain roles and changed jobs fairly often would it be likely they'd be able to handle it.

No offense, but your choice of talking point reads a bit like gatekeeping and ageism. One can just as easily argue that most startups fail therefore "most startup employees aren't suited for startups" either...

I'd certainly say that stagnation/passiveness is going to be a problem for a startup early employee candidate, but there's nothing inherent about being a FAANG dev or being in the startup scene that necessarily equates to drive. I know of "lifers" that have a ton of drive; they just also happen to have incredible alignment with their companies.

Here's an anecdotal story about the meaninglessness of labels: My own brother joined a startup in its early days. He had just come out of a PhD program, and despite having had virtually no prior industry experience (neither startup or corporate), he eventually grew to the position of director of tech. The startup IPOed last year. Its name? Duolingo.

I worked at a startup for 6 years before moving to FAANG and other larger companies.

I can confirm this is true.

Honestly, if your hiring criteria involves looking at pedigree, you're probably doing it wrong. FAANG people jump over to the startup side and vice versa all the time. People grow (yes, even those $500k/yr staff folks).

Rather than looking at the company names, you probably want to look at the quality of the work your candidates did. Was there manager-level experience, did it involve dev ops, was there evidence of growth progression, etc. This sort of stuff matters more.

That depends on the individual. Some FAANG employees are used to functioning in the highly structured environments that FAANGs provide and may not adjust well to the more freewheeling environments that startups operate in but others may adjust just fine.

That's not to say that people who function well with a structured environment aren't useful. Structure is necessary as the business grows out of the start-up phase and bringing in the right ex-FAANG employees at that phase to can help build that.

> And are debating who would make a better fit in startups as early employees.

You might not have the luxury to choose - how many FAANG employees are applying for your open positions and what are you offering them to make the move?

This is a pointless question. FAANG has people who are there to get paid while doing basic coding, VERY smart people, and plenty in between. So do startups.

Design your interview process according to your needs. Don't test on knowledge, bur rather reasoning skill according to the type of product. For example, for backend services positions, we set up a debugging problem based on the real world example that we had to go through, and it has been a very valuable tool for screening candidates.

Just focus on the technology and use something like Rails. Most web dev work is mundane, get whoever, just pick a productive technology, scaling is not an issue since you are a SaaS.

Context: currently at a FAANG, worked for startups in the past

The only way to answer the question is to generalize. There will always be individual exceptions. The pros and cons below mainly apply to engineers who only have experience in one or the other. They are personal observations and definitely do not represent _all_ engineers:

FAANG engineers

+ comfortable with thinking about scale

+ used to being on call

+ less likely to overpromise and underdeliver (consequences are worse at a FAANG)

- less able to work without requirements (they've always worked with a PM)

- used to working with incredible internal tooling

- expect a lot of compensation!

Startup engineers

+ more comfortable with switching stack/technologies

+ happier to pitch in with ideas outside of their team

+ more likely to have been involved in interviewing, even at junior level

- less used to documenting everything

- more likely to resist "formalizing" processes as the startup grows

> - used to working with incredible internal tooling

incredible is certainly one definition

I'm sure the quality varies wildly between big-co's, my experience is admittedly very narrow. Perhaps I should have written "used to working with internal tooling" - the majority of companies will never develop any internal tooling.

Cynic here. It probably also depends on what you're developing. Many FAANG employees are ethically compromised, given who they elect to work for. They've demonstrated a willingness to trade high pay for: experimenting on people[0], harming workers[1], damaging mental health[2], addicting youth[3], distorting reality[4], facilitating harm[5].

So, If you're cool with the people that make that happen, then, yeah. Recruit away.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-....

[1] https://theintercept.com/2022/04/04/amazon-union-living-wage...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/18/teenage-g...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/09/17/instagra...

[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/encountering-america...

[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/11/23/should-...

On the average, no. I worked for one of those companies and stupidly assumed that most people wanted to leave after a couple of years and start their own companies. I was completely wrong about that. I believe most of them just want someone else to outline the job so that they can execute it well.

I on the other hand don’t mind risk and always valued an interesting, worthwhile job over security.

> And are debating who would make a better fit in startups as early employees.

That seems like the wrong question.

Shouldn't you be worrying about who would be the best fit in your company? Or better yet, who will help you succeed NOW? (And then there's "who can you actually get?" The people you want have options.) In other words, relevant specifics, not generics.

I do a lot of work with early startups and if I'd invested in your company, we'd be meeting right now to figure out whether you're clueless (and what to do about it) or just wrote something that you didn't actually mean.

I've interviewed many FAANG employees as a startup hiring manager. They passed the technical bar at a higher rate, but many were not able to stomach the salary cut. Even fewer adjusted to the environment.

Found the individual, their attitude and work track record were better signals for fit than FAANG vs. startup dev.

This site might be useful for attracting the right candidates: https://topstartups.io/

Most FAANG people would rather get government jobs with employment security. You want devs from other startups.

Yeah many FAANG are institutionalized and were selected to be not capable of independent thought in the first place.

What part of the parent comment incited this response from you? The 'they want a government job' part or the 'they want employment security'?

Seems a bit dumb to tick others as dumb for not being all-in on the ANCAP dream or 'settling'.

The third thing he said:

>> You want devs from other startups.

> Seems a bit dumb

Are you sure you're in a good position to lecture others about content of their responses?

Yikes. Define "independent thought" here, and what information you used to come to that conclusion.

Worked in Startups, and FAANG.

The reality is that different human beings, different teams within a FAANG are WILDLY different.

You could take the majority of people that are on my team, and do amazing at a Startup.

You could not do that with the majority of teams we interface with.

It depends.

probably depends on the individual

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