Well, Google's and Facebooks definition of 'the best' engineers.
I don't think grinding leetcode for an interview is the best indicator of a good engineer, and graduating from a prestigious university is not always an indicator either. imho it seems like the best engineers now are the ones doing their own thing outside of the large companies, or are at smaller startups.
No, but if all of FAANG are hiring by that criteria, it still works; startups can hire good talent because they break the pareto equilibrium, but that's ok for FAANG because they obtain that tech through acquisition after the idea and execution are derisked. The system works!
That would surprise me. I have attended targeted career fairs with both FAANGs and national labs recruiting, and the national labs give off way more 'work-life balance' vibes. Plus, as the largest bureaucracy in the history of the world, the federal government isn't a good place to get a high return on brain damage when you want to actually get something done.
Having said that, the national labs do seem like good places to go geek out in your own advanced intellectual cul-de-sac.
Well from experience of being an undergrad and going to career fairs, this assessment is spot on. You don't realize this whole thing is bullshit until a few years into your career.
Because my frame of reference is being early or maybe early-mid career, where you can't possibly have the necessary experience to be 'best' without working significantly more than 40 hours weekly, and from my perspective most of getting there in the future follows that path too. I'm not discounting that some top engineers could exist outside of working a lot, but for most people the path to that distinction is a lot of work, and in most places that lot of work gets done outside of the hours when people are distracting you with meetings and small talk, which means not stopping at 40 hours weekly.
Having said all that, I don't discount the possibility of work life balance in the 60-80 hour range, but that's a whole separate skillset.
FAANG's currently have a problem with ideological mono-culture. I dont know if recruitment has exactly suffered because of that, $$$$$ can allow for a lot of suppression of personal beliefs, but I do know a few people that have outright refused to work in those companies because of that, who are pretty excellent programmers
Using open source to judge quality seems wild. Maybe people just have no interest in maintaining an open source project. Looking from the outside at some of the stuff people put up with, it doesn't look worth it at all. I'll just work privately
As the sole maintainer of a popular open source NASA project (and contributor to several others), I can say that my open source work reflects very poorly on my work overall. We have a real problem in that there is a drive to open source things, but there is no money at all to support open sourced work. As soon as the open sourced work is no longer something I use day to day, I have to either maintain it on my personal time or it gets abandoned.
NIST and other government institutes are not known for open source work mainly because most of their work is a combination of science and technology communication. They deal in publications, conferences, and reference datasets. In my industry, NIST and the NIH produce the most important R&D reference datasets in the world, and everyone else looks to them for guidance. With that said, the NIH also occasionally produces world class software too (NCBI BLAST, etc.) although they do have some issues with parts of their software engineering culture being a bit out of date.
That question is pretty meaningless unless you can somehow measure the quality of an engineer. Is it the engineer who can build systems nobody else can, the one who can build the cheapest system that performs to spec, the one that can work well in a team, the one that is always available, the one that can teach others, etc etc etc etc. I'm sure anyone can think of many more aspects to being a good engineer.
I bet NASA and NIST have a great bunch of quality all-round engineers, but I'd be surprised if they were better at leetcode than the average FAANG dev. After all, FAANG devs have literally been filtered through an "are they good at leetcode" process. FAANG may be full of money chasers, but if the way to get more money there is by "being a good engineer" that does not mean much.
Indeed, but "works to the highest (quality) standards" is only one of the many aspects of being a good engineer. For example: government engineers are often not as good at completing projects within budget.
As someone who was a government worker, a lot of the issues why projects go over budget is because management believes that a single developer can do the workload of 4. So the product never gets delivered and that developer leaves to work somewhere else.
I think that dilutes the meaning of "quality" to nothing. Like if someone says "that's quality work" or a "quality engineer" I think of something specific.
For example I'd call a BMW a quality car. I wouldn't call a Lada a quality car, though it's much cheaper and has a much higher bang-to-buck ratio than a BMW.
In that sense sometimes government work has to be the highest quality, especially when it concerns security or safety. Sure it could end up being magnitudes more expensive but I'd say that's a question of efficiency not quality
Feds have some of the most useless engineers/bureaucrats in the world. They do have a very, very tiny amount of mission motivated folks who are the best of the best, but that number is a rounding error. Ask anyone who has left.
Not firing folks, low pay, focus on the best work life balance in history, heavy affirmative action, politics, and having to work hard to carry the coasters isn’t an environment that naturally attracts skill and competence. Work 500% harder than the next guy and get the same promotion. No thanks.
The gov and contractors, like it or not, are jobs programs first and foremost. A remarkably effective jobs program if you just measure folks employed and not output.
> Well, Google's and Facebooks definition of 'the best' engineers. don't think grinding leetcode for an interview is the best indicator of a good engineer
Their employees are also the subset of those who can get to a location where they have offices and have the relevant work permits. Those who do not object to and specifically want to work at those companies. Those who find their technical challenges of interest. Those who do not already have a satisfactory job elsewhere and are actually in the market for a job.
Some engineers see themselves as merely tools, so they "sharpen" themselves to be used effectively. Why would MAANAM (FAANG is a bit outdated) want more creative ones? They will get bored and leave.
I don't think grinding leetcode for an interview is the best indicator of a good engineer, and graduating from a prestigious university is not always an indicator either. imho it seems like the best engineers now are the ones doing their own thing outside of the large companies, or are at smaller startups.