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Comment by pyrale | Hacker News Reader

You're mistaken in that you believe that the goal of culls is to cut underperformers. Stack ranking doesn't assess performance, it checks whether you're willing to do a little more to be ahead of your peers.

The real goal of culls is to motivate people to work more, to be more accessible to their managers' requests, etc. so they make it "to the next round". It's a pressure tool, not a performance control tool.

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This sort of thing is one of the big reasons why I would never work for a FAANG company. I prefer to work at a place that encourages good work rather than a weird cutthroat arena combat thing.

I'd still work there. For those comps I'd do a lot of things. My current job is already torture and doesn't pay nearly as well. But I guess that really a fictional problem for me since I'd never pass the interview.

As someone who has been there done that - read my other replies - I can say both that I don’t regret doing it and that I would not sacrifice my life now to ever go back to any large tech company or for the money.

I very much made two decisions this year after being Amazoned that prioritized my stress level over money.

1. Deciding not to put my shingle up and go independent. I have the network, the credentials and the knowledge to make more than I was making at Amazon going that route

2. Turning down a position that was going to be created for me by a former coworjer now director to be responsible for the cloud migration and infrastructure for a $7 billion public non tech company that would have also paid more in cash than my total comp at Amazon.

No, I never struck it rich in tech, I was a journeymen CRUD developer/architect when I got hired with two years of AWS experience and above average soft skills.

I feel the same way and would also never work at a FAANG.

That said, I suspect this is would be viewed as a benefit of the process since I'm fairly confident Amazon and the like don't want people who feel this way working for them regardless of the talent of those individual people.

Exactly this. “Are you willing to kill another human? No? Sorry, there’s no place for you in the infantry”

I feel a better analogy would involve (A) a demand that is outside the official job-description or duties and (B) isn't a fixed-bar but instead makes multiple employees fight each other in an indefinite race to the bottom.

Ex: "Are you willing to spend your free time becoming the General's #1 personal servant? No? Sorry, there's no place for you in the infantry."

I don't find better but more vague perhaps in attempt to sound nuanced.

If one goes by job description Amazon is acting strictly within those parameters. And that race to the bottom is not really hunger games.

On the other hand if one goes by unsaid rules of games, everyone including management, HR, employee know FAANG salary is multiple times of equivalent IT workers. And perhaps 95% of FAANG employees are not really developing new algorithms, hauling terabytes of data on their shoulders or being the force of good whatever that means. Just keep doing made-up work and wait until reach x million dollars goal. After that leave quietly or loudly by writing a nasty blog post lambasting management.

So mostly people understand they have to keep up the facade because talking about what's really happening will make it rather awkward for everyone.

The question should be the other way round, is there a place for them in civilised society.

Maybe their executives should stick to peeing in bottles.

I did a DiSC (corporate Myers-Briggs-esque personality test) assessment and dominance was listed as one of the core motivators for people. I'm not sure I actually believe that; it feels like that was retconned into truth so it'd get past the decision-makers who may actually have that tendency. But maybe it is!

However, on the bright side, it is kind of nice that FAANG attracts the type of people who actually think this sort of constant stack ranking arena fighting is okay. Think about it: if they really hated it, they'd leave. Obviously the pay is a huge motivator, but if it was as distasteful as it was to many others, they wouldn't hang around.

I do appreciate that FAANG companies are a bit like fly traps, collecting those sorts of people somewhere else so I don't have to work with them personally.

But understand, I am not asserting that FAANG companies are places nobody wants to work. I'm asserting that they are places I am not willing to work at. It's because I would be utterly miserable in that sort of working environment, and there is no amount of compensation that could make that tolerable to me.

Not all FAANG are like this. Google and Apple are known for being easy going. This of course depends on the team.

> Google and Apple are known for being easy going.

The engineers I know who work at those places wouldn't agree. But how true that is depends a lot on what sorts of things tend to bother you.

This is happening not only in FAANG companies but also a lot (if not, all) of companies. Unless you are in a hyper-growth company, you are more likely to see this kind of performance management process to continuously review and cut.

I'm surprised it hasn't spilled over to the rest of the industry, unlike their hiring practices.

It has. I went through this exact same PIP process with subjective improvement goals at Twilio. It was extremely stressful and I met all the goals but got fired anyway. In hindsight it was just a layoff.

I've never been through a PIP, but based on what I've seen with people who have, if I were put on a PIP that would be a strong signal that I'm not wanted there, so I'd just quit and save everyone the aggravation.

Add the fact that "fired" means "deported" for H1B workers, and it's the perfect way to extract maximum labor from a sizable proportion of your workforce.

> It's a pressure tool, not a performance control tool.

This, exactly. The world is full of lies, lies people honestly believe.

For example, have you seen a situation when parents feed a child, and try to get the kid to eat a bit more even when the child is full? What do they tell the kid - eat some more, it's good for you. Why do they really do it?

Because kids get hungry more often than adults, it's annoying / sometimes not possible / practical to stop to feed them as often. So we lie to them.

I think you're right on the money. and it's completely Toxic. i would never work at a company like that.

if FAANGs can get away with treating their employees like dog s*t then there must be vast over supply of talent.

Meh. Going to a FAANG is like joining an Olympic sports team; it's not a place you'd want to be if you aren't hell bent on going for the gold. The irony is that the pressure cooker works; an unhealthy degree of ambition, competitiveness, and willingness to work their tails off are all assets in the business world. I know a, at least to me, surprising number of people who successfully navigated these environments who later became founders/CEOs and high level executives.

> Going to a FAANG is like joining an Olympic sports team; it's not a place you'd want to be if you aren't hell bent on going for the gold.

Not according to everyone I know working at a FAANG company. This is mythology. You're at a FAANG because you did the LeetCode grind and passed the interview.

Tts almost the opposite. Olympics has a bunch of objective measures of performance. For individual sports its winning, for team sports theres various scoring/assist/defense/etc metrics that can be used.. plus if your team wins.

In tech, good luck. It's all vibes.

> Going to a FAANG is like joining an Olympic sports team

I guess, if the discipline is corruption. My company doesn't feel the need to tell me how to avoid discussing sensible topics with my teammates on group chat.

Yeah, because technical merit isn't the only way you get ranked in the stack. For instance, would you say no to an ethically questionable order if you're on a PIP?

It is naive to even imply that being a hard worker is going to insulate you from getting culled or laid off.

This feels like the tech version of the temporarily embarrassed millionaire meme: it's something people need to be true so they can justify their ambitions of making it. So they repeat it, and say it enough to believe it.

FAANG employees are no different from you and I in the aggregate. That's not a dig, that's just statistics.

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