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For those of you thinking about taking that big paying job in big tech, let me share my experience so far. Long rant incoming...

I grinded leetcode, did well in an interview, and joined a <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> for the pay, which was >250k. This was a lot more than I ever made before. Great news right? Not really. My bank account is bigger but my anxiety and quality of life are worse.

I came from a job where people are really collaborative and excited to work on things together. People would often show me what they are working on without even asking and show me cool tricks related to their work. I onboarded really fast and was super productive in only a few weeks.

Since I joined <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> as a SWE, I've found things to be the opposite. No one is interested in talking to me at all. No one will ever volunteer information; I have to ask/demand for any and all information from people. The teams and the managers didn't lift a finger to help me learn and onboard to the service/codebase that we were working on, and I was thrust into livesite work to support production bugs and deal with customer complaints early on. The on-call period was brutal, where I'd deal with countless incidents under time pressure with little to no help and bad TSGs.

I noticed the culture difference right away. So when I was new I set up rounds of 1-1s with people on the team (since we are all remote), but they treated it like a chore and a very "political" process. I was often told to provide a list of questions for them ahead of time, and they proceeded to answer my questions exactly as asked and nothing more. I even tried to ask more open ended questions like, "what would the best thing to focus on for a new engineer working on X be?" But these kinds of questions just elicited eye rolls and shallow responses.

No one answers my questions anymore; they often just pass me on to someone else. I've asked multiple times for people to pair up on work together, so I could learn a little bit from them seeing them go through things... but no one will do it.

I talked to my manager, and the manager of our partner team (I work two teams) about this and they both just deflected and said I need to be "more demanding" and to "hound people" until they give me the information I want. They tell me not to shy away from confronting people and to be "relentless."

I don't want to work like that.

My manager has honestly given me very positive feedback, though, and is hinting at an upcoming promotion as a possibility. I've actually accomplished a decent amount despite the circumstances, but I feel like I could have been 10x more productive if the culture was different.

I don't want to have to ask every question; I'd like people to take an interest in me like they used to, and volunteer information every now and then. I'd like someone to care about me and my development, but the culture at <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> seems to be very self centered. People here seem to work in their own bubble where collaborating at all is seen as doing someone else's work.

I honestly hate working here at <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY>, but I'm paid really well, so I've stuck with it for a little over a year. Things didn't get better over the year, though. I don't think I belong here anymore, and I question the hiring decision, since it seems to take a very particular type of personality to succeed in this environment. You need to be comfortable treating your coworkers like enemies, basically.

Funnily enough, I have an interview at another <TRILLION DOLLAR TECH COMPANY> (that seems to have an even worse reputation, oh no), set up this week, so I'm hoping that I do well and get another shot at it somewhere else. If it doesn't work out the second time, I'm going to give up on this whole Big Tech thing.

user:	manwithnoplan
created:	April 15, 2024
karma:	24