We are obsessed with FAANG companies. For the past 6 years, people come and leave, but I’m strapped in. I’m not able to quit. My self-diagnosis? Financial stability, prestige, and caliber — may be due to all of them, but behind the scene, what really dominates my decision is my culture and my education.
The Great Resignation
By 2022, roughly 33 million Americans have quit their jobs in the Great Resignation. I get it — people try out new lifestyles and new jobs. However, why do engineers quit FAANG companies while making at minimum $200k a year? What!? Really? I mean yes even entry-level software engineers make that much, probably more.
I had a chance to quit 2 years ago — I got offers from smaller companies, but I couldn’t turn my eyes away from the FAANG companies. I just couldn’t.
Aren’t the FAANG companies the best in tech? Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google. To me, they are the best indeed.
I am a software engineer. I spent the past 8 years, navigating through these FAANG companies. Before I got in, I was one of that swarm of people who failed countless times, so I appreciate what I have today.
To those who quit, it seems such a light-weighted decision nowadays to just give up what I considered the golden path for software engineers.
Obsession or Asian Culture?
FAANG used to assemble everything I wanted. I don’t feel ashamed to admit that. Aside from financial stability, over the past 6 years, I must have already proved myself enough, working at the FAANG companies, right? How am I still drawn towards its glory today? Am I over-conservative at 30 and digging myself into a hole? (maybe yes)
To find the answer, I chatted with some friends in tech. We came to some conclusions, one of them being the Asian culture and our education.
Asian education and culture are like a double-edged blade. It serves you well at tough times but also cuts you simultaneously.
1. Grind, Never Complain
In the typical Asian culture, we are taught to be humble: always embrace what’s available and make the best out of it. Complaining is an image of weakness.
Before I was in FAANG, even in my first mediocre job, my family encouraged me to stay and look for opportunities within the industry. The bottom line is, you are not supposed to complain at all. My parent’s generation went through tougher times, they didn’t get to make choices so they focus on grinding. This equation worked well for them so it’s passed on to us. It’s not like I had to do anything tough physically, but I was forced to grind, years before I even know what I was doing.
I didn’t get to choose if I like literature over science. I didn’t get to pick a weekend guitar class over the weekend study session. You don’t like the plan? Who cares — go finish the assignments!
This typical Asian culture influences my work ethic — I don’t find much to complain about at work. I’d be like: my high school stressed me out way more brutal than this — come on! I KNOW work challenges nowadays are at a different level, but the brain still mitigates the stress just like that.
When it comes to FAANG companies — what amazing hands of cards! Be humble, don’t look around, don’t complain, stay and make the best out of it! That’s my default setting at work.
2. The Whiplashed Golden Path
Asian family sets their kids on a golden path. If you are raised this way, in your eyes, there is only this one path to success. It’s awfully scary to go off-road.
The Asian family is harsh to their kids:
- You think you are good!? You are not. You can’t see others better?
- You’re not good at math, you have to spend extra time!
- You are not good enough to slow down. If you slow down, you are sliding backward, so don’t!
- If you can’t make it to the top 5 in your class, don’t even think about going out on weekends or buying a guitar!
How does this affect me? I find it uncomfortable to tell myself, okay, now you can settle, calm down and enjoy life. I can slow down for at most 2 weeks, and then I get mild panic and imposter syndrome.
It feels like training for sports. It is encouraging to some degree until all you hear is: if you are not the best, you are way behind — so hurry up! It’s a PG-13 version of the movie, Whiplash.
My generation was washed with this mindset: there was no other way. College education was the single best way to a better career and a better life. In China, there are literally 9 million fresh minds each year competing for a college education. In 2022, NYC has an 18+ million population. Imagine half of NYC rushing to take exams on the same day every year.
They are fighting for the few best colleges. If you skip the fight, you become a loser. If you don’t get into the best college, you are kind of losing too. This golden path: best mid-school, high school, college, so on and so forth.
And now, in my tunnel vision, even though my career decisions are very independent now, I was still drawn towards the golden path, the FAANG companies.
3. The Misguided Approval
Culture and education have one more side effect — the approval from ‘others’. It can be addicting. Here is how and why it happened.
Tracing back to the school years, if you happen to become one of the best, let’s say, the top 5 students in class, sure you get some moments of joy, but your family and teachers will swing a hammer towards your face:
There are others better! Why aren’t you in the top 5 of the school?
Your excitement is replaced with fast-beating hearts and a rash of adrenaline. Wait am I not good enough? Who is the better and how can I beat them?
Wait, this is so twisted! Deeply you know, their harsh comment is the approval! You get critical feedback when you are winning?
Even if you are good this time, you are not the best yet!
In a very strange way, they actually acknowledge your success by trash-talking to you.
The approval comes out very harsh and it traps you in a new round of competition. It’s a feedback loop: you win, others approve and criticize at the same time, and you are pumped to compete again. This feedback loop is addicting.
The problem with that is: you end up favoring others’ approval over your own fulfillment. What others think the best is the best for you. It’s kinda not healthy, to be honest.
This is the typical Asian culture I grew up with. They whiplashed you and they hijacked your ego. What’s worse is: if the approval comes from an academic-related context, or if the subject is science or engineering, the prestige is X times better than just making a decent income.
When it comes to working at the FAANG companies, this level of prestige and caliber is over the roof, right? Everyone in the industry knows these top tech companies, and the majority of people don’t have the opportunity to get in. It’s like a worldwide contest where so many smart engineers compete — it’s the ultimate approval from others for a young Asian professional in engineering.
Once again, by default, I was culturally wired to weigh such approvals over everything else.
Where I’m At?
Asian culture doesn’t really guide kids towards their passion or creativity. It’s all about following the golden path. I personally have some friends, young Asian professionals who don’t really find passion in their careers, ouch.
I was lucky. The first week in the US, I was picking a major. That’s perhaps one of the most critical decisions and the most typical Asian-culture-guided decision I ever made: knowing it’s hard, knowing the language barrier, having a minimum background in computer science — but it’s validating and leads to great prestige: so I decided to grind and follow it through. Luckily I was genuinely curious about computer science so I stumbled in but graduated smoothly.
After these years, I figured out my obsession with the FAANG companies. Even understanding all these, I’m still pretty invested in my job, still doing that Asian grinding inevitably. It’s just a little bit better because now I get to make decisions more consciously.
So, what do you think of the job at the FAANG companies? Will you choose to quit FAANG? What keeps you around the big tech companies?
