lowiqengineer

Yeah, I stopped going on CSCQ years ago because I knew it was just making me more depressed. Still, I know a lot of successful people personally who privately believe I'm a failure for working at the FANG i work at so the net effect is the same unfortunately.

I currently work at a FANG.

I don't think it's so much the high pay as much as it is that my peers look down on me because of the FANG I work at. I've practiced for years already (to fairly mediocre results).

weirdly i'm usually fine on the job, I don't feel the same way at all. I'm generally at ease even.

It's tough, it's like I feel attacked by the fact that I can't solve these in 5 minutes like the other folks I see on Linkedin.

Honestly I'm fine on the job and I'm usually not stressed like I am when I do leetcode. I'd be fine keeping my current gig but the TC increase even if/when I get promoted is lower than the average Google new grad offer.

Of course. It’s the same code words people use when they describe neighborhood schools while avoiding race.

“Wouldn’t consider Amazon when planning a move” seems to have the same tenor as “Wouldn’t consider moving to a less white neighborhood”

You’re really just implying that if the experience is worse and we are treated badly (aka no company paid off sites to Hawaii or seasons working remotely in Tahoe) the only people at Amazon are there because they aren’t capable of getting better offers.

My company (Amazon) is hiring fast right now. Somehow I feel like you aren’t going to consider us because you think we are inherently inferior engineers though!

What do I do if I'm not successful then? I've dealt with suicidal ideation before, but everyone then just told me that it was a problem of mindset.

If I'm not capable of becoming successful then...what's the point?

What marginal benefit does a person with Merit aid going to Dartmouth or Carnegie Mellon over Binghamton or Pitt have to me? Hell, I’d even say giving them government backed loans or other aid doesn’t benefit me.

We need a radical reallocation of capital away from the folks that are already doing the best at the expense of the rest of us and towards people and institutions that foster social and economic mobility. Ending government backed loans to all non-community colleges or in state public programs would be a start.

To be clear, the answer is a company that requires the hard work I put in to get in. For most people out of college Amazon is their “safety” company because you can get an offer with 1 coding challenge. Unfortunately, because of this people assume I’m lazy and inherently unintelligent because I joined out of undergrad.

No I’m an SWE

I mean these sorts of things would imply that Amazon doesn't though, right? Why would anybody accept the "worst" for no benefit unless that was the best they got? In a free labor market that just means my inherent value is lower.

Its indeed true that Google rejects qualified candidates. But if I miss a question during an onsite, that just means I'm unqualified.

I've done all of that, and the best job I got was Amazon :/ It seems like this industry only works if you're just naturally intelligent (or lucky)

I think the implication is the average engineer at Amazon isn't capable of getting into another FAANG, because Amazon is the easiest/least well paying company in FAANG.

Amazon was the best offer I got out of undergrad. I came very close to doing some very bad things to myself when I got rejected from Facebook and Google after my onsites and was depressed for months.

Please have some empathy for people like me that can't waltz into any job and don't say things like this.

I get what you're saying, but the evidence in my experience seems to prove otherwise if I can't get into Google or Facebook after trying nearly a dozen times between them.

I make around ~$150k a year right now. If I get promoted this year, I'll make $180k. Google engineers start at around $200k. By nature of the free market of labor it seems like I'm only worth about 75% of a Google engineer at maximum to work on identical things.

Folks have told me to "just go to Google" don't understand the anguish of being worth 75% of a human at best, and not having the intelligence to pass an interview loop anywhere consistently.

Even if they aren't representative of ability it's a strong signal if I keep getting rejected from Facebook (3 times for internship with final interviews, 2 times for onsite) and Google (2 times for internship, 1 time for full time onsite). You yourself say in a different comment that Amazon is easier to get into - that just means I'm less intelligent right? I did get into Citadel, but that was via their JavaScript domain specific interview process that had (as my friend described it) "mind-numbingly easy questions".

It's easy to say that I shouldn't make getting hired into a company as a badge of honor...but I truly have no other accomplishments to speak of, even within Amazon. All of my friends seem to think I'm some sort of disappointment, or at least not successful.

I wish I could avoid using my career as a factor for my self worth, but I don't make enough money to achieve my goals and won't for 2 promotions from now. It really feels like i'm both stuck and limited by my inherited intelligence.

I’m currently an Amazon engineer - it was my first job out of college. I worked really damn hard to get this job, and now everyone (including you, a Facebook/Google employee) seem to think I’m stupid and inferior because I didn’t pass my Google/Facebook onsites.

I’ve studied for hundreds of hours but the best company I’ve cracked is a hedge fund. It’s comments like these that make me wonder if I should just end it all.

Its true - they believe themselves to be so damn smart they behave with rank condescension towards everyone else as the "top 1% of intelligence".

It’s pretty apparent that they think people who don’t work for google are vastly inferior human beings. It honestly runs counter to their “social justice” facade.

Yeah, I know. But even when talking to friends at top companies it's like a stream of microaggressions when I've worked just as hard as they have to be where I am.

I'm __guessing__ that Facebook will have fully remote teams and orgs where this is less of a problem and will have ample opportunities to come to HQ. They fucking send their interns to other offices multiple times during an internship!

> Based on my experience with the various AWS SDK libraries, I don't think Amazon has very good developers, or perhaps they have good developers but a poor development culture

Dude, have you fucking seen the Android libraries? They're awful! At least the AWS SDK libraries are like that because they're all autogenerated from a spec.

I mean in the sense that being customer obsessed should mean you do not evil. We absolutely are still customer obsessed.

A 5 year old gist from 1 employee (out of the current ~70k SWE's employed at the company + all that have come and gone in the last 5 years) just to shit on the quality of Amazon engineering? And folks wonder why I have depression -it's not because i'm burnt out, it's because the HN crowd thinks I'm some sort of cognitive defective for working at Amazon.

> The divide between AWS employees and everyone else employed at Amazon seems to be "2007 Google employee" against "sweatshop"; they're run mostly-separately, from what I've read.

This is incredibly offensive. I work in CDO and have friends in retail and AWS and the biggest difference day-to-day is that we have different systems to manage our AWS accounts.

Equivocating me to a Wipro employee is honestly really disgusting. These sorts of microaggressions are the worst part of working at Amazon, the WLB is fine.

> 'we care about our employees' or 'do no evil' LPs).

Customer Obsession is "do no evil".

> Paying back a signing bonus if they fire you seems super rough. Is this common elsewhere? 2 years also seems high - the time I got a signing bonus, it was "pay back if you leave voluntarily in 1 year" which was much nicer than the described.

I actually don't think this is true. My understanding is if you're PIPed they don't really care. The signing bonus is paid out monthly the 2nd year (and for people hired at SDE2+ its first year too) so you don't have to pay it back after the first year.

Disclaimer: Amazon L4

Low IQ is apparently getting into Google. I don't think many people regard getting into Amazon as requiring a genius IQ or even an above-average one.

That is what Google implies...unless they just share names, universities, and ages.