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A look at why I think not working at MAANG is not the end of the world.
I break (and occasionally build) apps for Android. I sometimes work on backend as well. When I'm not coding, I can most likely be found watching a TV Show, a movie, playing video games or reading a book.
Amazing bhaiya
Great post, I agree with most of the parts (actually 99.99%),
Just a request, try to make it longer from next time
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Perhaps a little bit of clarification is in order: I do want to work at Google. They have an amazing engineering culture and excellent tooling for people like me. I'm just not aiming for it like it's the end of the world and the sole goal of my life.
Why. Alright.
The first and the last thing that I wanna be is a good engineer that creates value. That's it. You don't necessarily have to be at MAANG to do that. You could do that in a homegrown startup or a small to medium company too. In my opinion, you'd get to create even more value there.
Let's first go ahead and take a peek at my perception of what this so-called term value means.
When I say I'm creating value, in my mind, I'm doing one of the following things:
So any positive stuff like that falls into the "creating value" bracket for me. Now, coming to the crux of the question, how do you create more value out of MAANG?
You'll probably get less pay, fewer perks, and most probably longer working hours (if you're working at a startup building its first product, bid your work-life balance goodbye). But if you're ultimately happy while working, it won't matter.
The world's top engineering talent works at MAANG, but what most people forget is that most of these people were already the world's topmost engineers before they joined. They were hired at MAANG because they had a knack for good engineering, not because they could solve 40 algorithm questions in 10 minutes. Right now, joining MAANG in India has become a bit like JEE. People are mindlessly completing courses and solving DSA questions like idiots, and in the process forget what Engineering is really about. While I myself occasionally enjoy an algorithmic puzzle every now and then, I find more joy in building cool apps.
Engineering is about building good products that can help people. You can do that anywhere, MAANG or not.
If you liked this article even the slightest bit, you'd probably want to give this one a read: The pros and cons of being a software engineer at a BIG tech company. It's much better written than mine.