What’s it like working at a large tech company?
I’ve been working at startups or building my own startups and I’m just trying to get a realistic picture of if the grass is really greener. Is job security at a larger company real? What’s the pace like, I understand it depends on the team, but is it long hours and as crazy as a startup? Is there really that big of a salary difference (funded startups these days have pretty competitive offers). Is there really a lot of process that get in your way? Are your peers generally competitive or supportive? Thank you HN community for your thoughts and experiences
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] threadNow, $200k isn't bad. But the offer I accepted from the public tech company is for $420k the first year, and will likely go up from there, especially if the stock does well. It's not crazy to think I could be making $600k - 800k within a few years. And to be honest, I think it's on the low end for the big tech companies at my level. And it doesn't come with some crazy grind as far as I can tell. People seem to actually work 40 hours, the PTO policy is flexible and people take 20-25 days a year off, people work from home when they need to, the benefits are solid, etc.
After this experience and seeing the huge disparity in pay, I would never go work at some random startup unless I was founder level or deeply, deeply believed in their mission.
Check out https://levels.fyi ...from everything I've seen, it's pretty accurate. The numbers there for my company and level were almost $70k lower than what I ultimately accepted.
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
Here in Italy, to get that money, you need to be the CEO of a huge company.
I feel so fucking lucky.
How did you do on the technical interviews?
Can you give us examples of “sell yourself” as a potential client?
Any interesting interview tips?
I’ve been freelancing/self-employed/raised money etc... about 8+ years and I’m debating if it’s worth it to apply to larger tech companies. They tend to have a higher barrier to entry with the tech interviews so I probably need to brush up, any tips there? I’ve been managing a small team and looking to do the same so not sure how much to study for the tech interviews.
Appreciate your responses so far! It’s been very insightful
Follow up:
How long have you been working there?
Is it a manager position or engineering?
It's an IC role, roughly equivalent to the upper band of L5 / E5 at Google or FB (though they might pay better).
But it is not unreasonable, as you have to think of how much the large publicly traded tech companies pay for talent which is in the same level as a startup founder.
Also that work life balance seems decent. Are you worried that you will find enough of a challenge at the position?
It varies greatly from company to company. At Google (where I work) yes. At Facebook no.
> What’s the pace like
I often work less than 40 hours a week and nobody even mentions it, but if I work more they tell me to work less.
> Is there really a lot of process that get in your way?
This depends entirely on what you want to do. Do you want to redesign GMail? Do you want to rewrite the codebase in Haskell? Do you want to move your data storage to mongo db? Then yes, there will be a lot of process in your way. Risky things like user facing changes and introducing new unsanctioned technologies will force you to go through a lot of bureaucracy.
But on the other hand if you just want to build and improve infrastructure using company sanctioned tools then there isn't that much process at all, just get a code reviewer and you are done. I haven't been blocked by process for years, I just decide I want to implement a feature, I write the code and send it and the feature is in an hour later.
> Are your peers generally competitive or supportive?
Peers evaluate each other so you don't see much toxic competition. However most of your peers will be relatively ambitious people so they will strive to look better than you, so you could say that they are competitive even though in this competition supporting peers looks good.
Why are there people working at large tech companies looking to leave their positions? Is it because it’s so boring? Is it because they’re not getting promoted fast enough? Do they not like the people they’re working with? Can you transfer to another team easily?
Startups and big tech are two very different environments. The environment that is best for you depends on many things. Suffice to say, it’s best to understand your goals and motivations for the next 5 to 10 years.
You can learn a lot at either big tech or a startip if you surround yourself with the right people. Big tech has more people, which means your chances of finding excellent mentors is higher, but the risk of having toxic people around you is also high.
Compensation is usually good at big tech, after the stock vesting starts to kick in ( Which can take a couple years). If you look at the base salary that isn’t stock based, then it’s not that different from a startup. However, this is also something that is highly depemdemt on what you are doing and who you are working for.
Is the grass greener? I think we are biased humans who are always looking for something better. It’s human nature. So yes, the grass is probably greener on the other side. But how’s the grass where you are currently standing?
As for mentors, working at startups I’ve had some pretty good success finding mentors who were essentially advisors and at larger companies or retired seasoned vets for the therapy, professional growth, and debugging strategies/technical problems. I think that would be the same because you’d have to make an effort to get something out of that mentorship - I don’t believe mentorship is bought or falls into your lap, it usually happens because of good chemistry (being in both sides of this).
As for stock compensation, from my understanding it’s usually options? Where the company has to grow correct? If it stays flat, it’s basically nothing? (Please correct next if I’m wrong, I’m a bit oblivious to this). Also from tax perspective it also eats into this? Just want the post tax perspective and assess the risk/rewards. Understandably, startups the stock is 99.9% worthless.