That's just your experience, though.
It reflects mine, before I went to elite companies, where it is quite normal for people to live-and-breath software, at almost all hours.
I've worked at FAANG, yes, as well as one of the top two frontier AI labs, quant, and now, in a similar role doing very technical research.
Do you not think it's considered "elite" to e.g. work at such companies in highly technical roles in the same way that a PhD at Stanford is considered "elite"? As a holder of the latter, I do. If not, what would you consider an "elite" team?
Maybe you think the statement was pretentious, but your response: "I hope you don’t call your average FAANG and adjacent “elite” - that's sad" is, truly, the most pretentious thing I've ever read on this site. So I'll ask: what do you consider elite?
Yes I’ve worked at FAANG and the average mid level or even senior developer is not that impressive. Anyone with time on their hands and a decent proficiency can grind enough leetCode to get in.
Not that I did personally, I came in in the internal cloud consulting division (yes a full time blue badge, RSU earning employee).
You know then while all developers have to work at scale. Most of the work is built on pre-existing scalable components.
There are 1 million developers+ possibly if you count all of the FAANG + adjacent developers. I’ve nope a few of them during interviews after I left because I knew they couldn’t handle not being coddled by BigTech and wouldn’t know what to do with ambiguous requirements , an empty AWS account (even if they worked at AWS) and empty git repo.
But back to the point, they very much treated their job as a just a way to earn money and RSUs. They would have been a fool to treat a company as toxic as Amazon as anything else.
Yes I knew what I was getting into going in. I was a 46 and it was my 8th job out of college. I made my money, made connections, put it on my resume and moved on
These days? Quant, AI employees who have 2 commas in their yearly salaries, etc.
It’s not random mid level developer at a FAANG who “grinded leetCode” or even a senior developer who memorized “Designing Data Intensive Applications”.
You really didn’t think I was some 22 year old posting on r/cscareerquestions who was mesmerized by people “working at a FAANG” did you? For me it was just my 8th job out of now 10 and just another way to exchange labor for money.
>before I went to elite companies, where it is quite normal for people to live-and-breath software, at almost all hours.
Honest question: Do they actually _want_ to live-and-breathe software, or do they work in a highly competitive and highly compensated environment where doing that is implicitly required?
Defintely a mix, though I agree with you that the majority fall under, "they work in a highly competitive and highly compensated environment where doing that is implicitly required."
