If it is the norm I blame it on the over supply of software engineers. The salaries stay high but the churn is now higher because with that high of a salary they will burn through as many engineers as possible to get the perfect person.
If you don't like this idea, get of my lawn. ;)
> broken/horrible interview trivia loops, the nonstop crunches, the nonstop on-call escalations, the difficult ethical positions that come with working at some companies, etc. have me feeling worse than ever about this profession.
> a few companies have eliminated all that wasteful "toil" of interacting with human beings by instead treating them like machines...
I agree that these things are happening, but this is not happening everywhere. In particular, Microsoft is not true for any of the above over the last 5+ years since Satya came onboard. In my experience, every one of the above is not true at Microsoft, with one notable exception: the interview loop is indeed hard. But other than that, it's a much better situation at Microsoft. There are no difficult ethical positions (ethics and trust are first class core values there). Individuals matter, and allowances are made for different people's strengths and weaknesses. Workloads and deadlines can indeed be negotiated. It's far more "human" there than other places like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, and other places.
You joined a good org and that's awesome, but I believe you can just as easily join a bad one at Microsoft or a good one at Amazon.
Er, when? Old Microsoft was infamous for the ping pong ball interview questions and stack rankings. Is this not just a result of companies in the tech market being successful and turning from plucky underdog to bureaucratic behemoth?
My own experiences, the horror stories I've read, the broken/horrible interview trivia loops, the nonstop crunches, the nonstop on-call escalations, the difficult ethical positions that come with working at some companies, etc. have me feeling worse than ever about this profession.
It didn't use to be like this. There was a time not long ago when individual personality and skills mattered. Workloads could be negotiated, interviews were conversational.
But now it seems that a few companies have eliminated all that wasteful "toil" of interacting with human beings by instead treating them like machines, and thousands of other companies follow suit almost blindly.
I'd love to see a job aggregator for anti-FAANGs. Does such a thing exist?