This is what Apple does as well. So not all FAANGs are equal here.

If you're doing general quant library or low latency stuff at an IB I wouldn't say this wouldn't happen but I'd say it's definitely not common.

Can you tell us more about this? What's their reason for it?

In the fall, your pay was evaluated (and kicked in at the new year). You were paid on the assumption that you were a top performer (otherwise you would have already been let go), so they would adjust you to "how much would we have to pay them to get them in the door today". They needed data for that calculation.

One source of data was how much they had to offer new hires to get in the door. A second source was industry salary surveys. And a third source was your offer letters from other companies, if you chose to share them. If you get a huge offer elsewhere, they would maybe match it, or maybe tell you that you're better off going to that other offer.

It also served another purpose. It gave you a chance to look at that other offer (assuming you could get one) and really thing about whether you still liked your job at Netflix enough to stay. They wanted people to be happy about continuing to work there, and were supportive of you leaving if you weren't happy, because they know you do your best work when you enjoy it.

FWIW, my raises at Netflix were typically 20%+, and so were a lot of people, because they economy was on fire at the time.

I've heard about the culture of fear at Netflix - was this your experience as well? Who decides whether you are a top performer or not - only the manager, or the peers as well? Do they use stack ranking? How is the performance deduced, e.g. by nbr of commits? Thanks!

> I've heard about the culture of fear at Netflix - was this your experience as well?

At first yes. But you quickly realize that in most cases only the underperformers were let go. In cases where good performers were let go, it was usually by a bad manager, and then that manager would get let go and they would sometimes even offer the other person their job back (but they usually already had another one).

> Who decides whether you are a top performer or not - only the manager, or the peers as well?

You manager has final and single say on both hiring and firing. But they always ask for input from others as a matter of course.

> Do they use stack ranking?

Absolutely not. Stack ranking is the opposite of what Netflix believes. They operate on the assumption that if everyone were stacked ranked, everyone would be in top rank. Stack ranking is evil and a terrible way to run a company if you use it for determining compensation or firing.

> How is the performance deduced, e.g. by nbr of commits? Thanks!

Haha no, no metrics like that. It's much more holistic. Are you getting good work done, are you making a positive difference. Managers are pretty in tune with the work getting done. Most come from engineering backgrounds and at least understand the work being done by those that report to them. They also can see all the feedback in the annual feedback session. It becomes pretty obvious who is not performing.

I guess this is rare - the detection of such cases, since the bad manager's manager has to be aware. Also, the holistic evaluation makes things hard to argue - subjective opinions prevail.

If "top performer" is defined as, say, 90th percentile, does that imply >90% turnover?

Think of it like a sports team (which is how Netflix always described it). They wanted the best people in the league.

Btw, can Netflix please put some of that capital in to better programming, or at least in to adding a "Delete + never show me this or anything like this every again" button. Platform is a pile at this point. No offense

Any engineering job paying double Netflix comp is going to have very high expectations about hours worked and rate of delivery.

I'd go from 30k to 100k regardless of work conditions, but not from 350k to 700k.

Like, if you'd put a button in front of me and pressing it would undo it like it'd never happened, I'd have pressed it without hesitation. And they weren't even working me long hours or being outright mean to me or anything, the place and the work were just dreary as fuck and it was making me feel like shit even in my off hours.

I had another job by month 4, and took a pay hit (though not all the way down to my prior level) to get out fast.

And the comp package I turned down was about $700k at the time, which was 10 years ago. Nowadays it would be a $1M+ job easy.

But not seeing my family is not worth any amount of money to me, since there are other jobs for a lot less that let me see my family and live plenty comfortably.

And if was a blue collar job you got overtime. This job expected you to work onsite 80 hours a week.

A c++ developer requires a deep focus that a typical business 9 to 5 role doesn't

No manager in their right mind would trust code from utterly exhausted people written after midnight to manage billions of dollars of capital.

1. It makes no correction in how an irrational institution is run that first level managers are rational. It just means they are stressed.

2. I met him at a language meetup for another language, he wanted out but would have trouble making half his salary.

(If you wanted me to trust code written by interns and reviewed across distance and language barriers, C++ wouldn't be my first choice, assuming I got a job in banking management, how likely would it be that I could change anything about that?)

And those people that work months away from their families -- they're being abused too. You'll notice that the owners of oil rigs aren't out there with them, for example.

That’s what you said originally, which reads as mostly normal work hours, plus maybe some overtime.

If it was 16 hours a day, then please say so.

> I wouldn't be allowed to take my laptop home, so if I had a hard problem to solve, I'd have to stay in the office the whole time. So basically they expected us to never see our family nor collaborate with anyone.

The part you highlighted says you cannot work from home. That’s unrelated to the number of hours they expected you to work.

OP could have spelled it out, but in any communication there is a level of shared knowledge.

When you read a comment that you understand to be complaining about making nearly a million dollars whilst working 9/5 in the office, a more charitable path would be to examine your own context and shared knowledge, rather than exclaim loudly that OP is a bad person.

Not that you did that, but others have.

A blind spot, I suppose; I have spent my whole working life in the West Coast tech industry - though discussions on this site generally share that cultural context.

Not the person you're replying to, but I was not aware. I guess we have a different cultural backgrounds and some things that are obvious for most of this website are not for me.

Also this makes me even more confused. So OP actually expects being pressured into working overtime (irrelevant where - at home or in the office)? And that's not even their main issue?

What's the point of getting a double salary if you have to work twice as much? Can't they (as a great software developer with a strong work ethics and a good work-life balance they clearly have) just... refuse the overtime?

Re-read your original description again. Nowhere did you say you had to work 16h a day.

National security is different because the rules are imposed from the outside. These are self imposed rules.

Also most defense contractor employees don't work that much overtime and many can take the non-classified parts of their work home.

Umm... wat!?

Sure in theory he would be able to retire sooner etc, but retirement isn’t such a big deal if you don’t hate your job. Also, savings compounds so saving 3x as much doesn’t mean working 1/3 as long especially when you consider social security benefits etc.

It's ok that you feel bitter about missing out on that comp because you're not type-A enough, no need to cover it up with these wishy-washy non-complaints.

I work on a software used (not exclusively) by the USA armed forces.

I work from home for the most part. I can do that while travelling as well but I have some limitations on which countries I can do that from. But I'm not sure of the entire list.

Edit: saw your comment it was actually 80h/w onsite. That is abuse but hey the pay is great.

Silicon Valley sucks :)

But now I have choices, and wouldn't choose that choice again.

That is fine and, tbh, a very healthy attitude. But it is not abusive in any meaningful sense of the word because it is not a worthwhile tradeoff for you personally.

I feel like software development is one of the activities that are difficult to estimate. There's scope creep and sometimes all sorts of deadlines for compliance or feature rollouts and so on, so the actual workload can vary a lot.

Not saying that's okay and shouldn't be considered a planning issue, of course.

In this day and age, in this day of robotics, AI and 1% of population in agriculture, to have to work just to eat and be sheltered is abuse.

It's a radical idea, I get that. Maybe one day it will be seen as a truism, or common sense.

Once food is taken care of, a great pressure would ease off and people would find themselves with more money, which then might be exchanged to less work.

Same reasoning can be apply to housing or even to medical care. The people who build houses would get the best spots for new houses, or the rarest food, or social recognition and status. And so the medics, teachers, etc.

This can't and won't happen in a day. There are many gotchas and unforeseen problems. But we can start working on it and planning and taking small steps towards this goal. It doesn't have to be all or nothing: it can be, for example, 1 hour off the working day every 5 years, for example.

It was certainly a memorable experience, but one I never wish to repeat.

It was my understanding that was the bare minimum, corresponding to times when workload was low.

Crunch time would naturally go way beyond that.

Not what I describe decent working conditions.

   Basically, they were so worried about secrecy of their trading algorithms and people sharing them with other companies

  - demands to keep them informed of what you were doing
  - private investigators checking in on what you are doing
  - threatening legal letters
  - or actually being sued

EDIT: And another point about "double the comp". The comp structured so that 75% is a discretionary annual bonus payout (with claw backs), and your base salary is 25%. So you could actually end up making less money, depending on the whims of the markets and/or internal politics.

But you aren't wrong about the industry in general. It's crazy frustrating.

That's probably because you worked somewhere with decent employee protections, since it sounds like you worked outside of the USA.

It's like a start up / small company culture with great compensation - you have a direct impact very easily and it's obvious when others aren't pulling their weight. The one I joined had 10 hours a day (8-6) in the contract, but no one worked more than 8 hours in the office and they actually had very flexible hours as long as you delivered.

FAANG has good compensation but can be very frustrating for a good engineer. These are big companies where it can be difficult to get anything done. There are many layers of management and different depts that have to be coordinated to do anything. The performance process is kind of insane and depressing and you spend a lot of your time just learning to game it, rather than focusing on engineering.

I did crazy things when I was younger, and I would NOT subject myself to those now, so yeah - abuse.

And those C++ automotive jobs in Germany? Sorry, I'm not even going to interview for 70k€ annually.

I'd take that job in a heartbeat. Working on cars? Check. Nice European country? Check. Work-life balance? Double-check. What's not to like?

Maybe it's because I'm looking for fresh graduate jobs, and 70000€ looks very attractive to me, even with a 35% tax.

The grass is always greener on the other side. :)

If you don’t like the idea of living in San Francisco or Chicago, you’ll hate it at most of the large European cities.

Small towns are a different manner.

Make no mistakes, I don't have any illusions about cultural differences and am perfectly aware of grass-greener-on-other-side syndrome. I just don't want to be stuck in a 700 km^2 island all my life.

The pay & the taxes, mainly. It is more fun owning one of those German cars than helping write their software.

> Maybe it's because I'm looking for fresh graduate jobs...

If you are just starting out, observe that the point of a job is to make money. Give serious thought to finding a job that pays well. Most people you see are working solely because that makes them money, although optimising $/hr is usually not something people regret.

That's probably actually required though.

There's a book called 73 Rules of Spycraft by Allens Dulles and these are obviously relevant for financial trading:

Rule 2, 3 and 4, are I think, the relevant ones in this case. Especially 4:

>No matter how brilliant a given individual, no matter how great his goodwill, if he is lacking in security, he will eventually prove more of a liability than asset.

First, those 8-5 hrs are only stated by your contract. Everybody on HN complains that "unlimited" PTO obviously does not mean "unlimited". Same as your "strictly " 8-5 working hours. There is a high level of peer pressure to get things done immediately.

Working in a mid office role, I frequently had front office at moment's notice ask to implement complex deals while trying to understand their vague descriptions of said deal. Now I have to spend an hour with them to parse out what they want. Good luck trying to have a mutual conversation with the front office in a high stress situation. I had to once implement a completely new computational feature to the code base in two days just to accommodate a single deal. And don't dare think that you can get into flow...

So not only can some of these deals have long compute times, but then you have front office analysts pinging you every hour to see "how are things shaping up" and if you have something ready.

In the end, not only do you have your own tasks set by your direct manager, but you have several analysts on your ass that could drop a complaint at any second. In the end, you have multiple bosses. If they are unhappy with how fast you are delivering, you can bet your direct report will one day hear about it. There goes your performance review and year end bonus.

Now not only do I have multiple people at work on my ass, my family is pissed that Dad has to work late this evening because he was given something to work on that needs to be delivered asap.

Don't get me started on the snark by the back office. Not only can get shit on by front office, but the level of unhelpfulness by the back office made shit roll down from all sides.

You did the right thing for you and your family.

I can remote work, or remote connect to solve a hard problem, there's ofc a way to change these. As for sharing code internally, yeah, I fight for it and I get it (I m a Java dev and we need to reverse a lot of old C++ that the OGs gatekeep, takes lots of escalation to breach the "need to know" BS).

I think you can largely lower your salary to get a more junior position with no stress: I was a team lead working 6 to 11 in a startup jungling with timezone between mexico and Indonesia, and I joined the investment bank as a junior idiot for a cool 20% increase. And I refuse promotion, why do you think you d be forced to take the money and the pressure ?

With all due respect you don't know what you are talking about. This doesn't represent my 15+ year experience in that domain.

> But I would have had to work in their office in Manhattan, be in by 8:30am every day and not leave until after 5 at a miniumum.

Must have been a back office job because that's not early enough for trading hours.

- Guy says he turned down a bunch of money for work/life balance reasons

- Nah

- Guy has to respond to dozens of nay-sayers telling them he was perfectly happy with his current dump truck of money thank you very much

And he complaints about abuse while working for... AMAZON. Seriously? The irony is palpable here.

I have yet to hear the stories about Citadel firing workers because they took a bathroom break.

You: “This is OUTRAGEOUS! Hard pass.”

We sw devs can be a spoiled bunch sometimes.

You are responsible for a trading system that's turning over hundreds of millions a day. If you're not in the office by 8am or whatever, that's not a "hey you were a bit late this morning" - it's a major "wake up the CEO the engineer on call is not present and we're not trading"! It's BAD. your train ran late? Doesn't matter, you're responsible. Your boiler exploded? Leave your house flooded, work comes first.

It's EXTREME pressure all around. I've done overnight support for a fairly infamous quant fund and I'm still on medication 5 years later because of the anxiety disorder I developed whilst working there. To this date the Blackberry ringtone triggers a PTSD response and I get physically sick if I hear it.

I spoke with someone recently who is in sales for a large finance behemoth we've all heard about and even that person was like "Goldman is the worst, I'd never go there."

But, most developers in quant roles, or close to quant roles (trading infrastructure, research support, etc) do not experience anything like this. On call is rare for these positions and they have regular work schedules with normal hours. Plus the compensation is multiples of what someone in an overnight support role will get paid. You probably know all this.

I was at Man AHL for 5 years after leaving GR and that is a pretty laid back company in comparison. I was not on a trade critical team per se, but some of our system were used for pre-flight checks. As such, if there was an issue the on call person got called at 5 am to sort it out. If not resolved within an hour or so, the cio/cro got called and had to decide whether to trade regardless or not. Thankfully not a common issue but definitely at least a call or two every time you did support.

Maybe it really isn't for you. On the other hand I've worked in this industry for 30 years, and done those hours, and longer, for 30 years, and enjoyed more or less every minute of it. I've flown all over the world, and been to various events and conferences that I would not have had a chance to do in another career.

I'm not clear what 'abuse' you think you're going to get. We are in a fortunate position in life actually, that we're developers that can change jobs on a whim and there's a large marketplace for our skills.

My advice to you is that you should actually have taken the role, gained some experience of a different industry (the first 6 months will be low responsibility), and if it's not for you, leave.

> It was the fact that I would not be allowed to share my work internally

I've only heard of one company that's as mad as that and they start with 'G'.

I do however share the same sentiment as the parent poster - I interviewed for XTX for a c++ role when I quit and during one of the interviews I asked about on-call rota and out of hours work.

The answer I got: "oh, it's not too bad. We have a weekly rota, you can expect to get called maybe 3 or 4 times... a night".

I noped the fuck out of that.

Others like Citadel and Jump were similar stories. Many have made offers but a combination of insane out of hours requirements and non compete clauses means I've told them all to shove it, and took an "underpaying" role to achieve some kind of balance in my life.

We were at least honest in the interview process regarding hours, there are companies where you would only find that out after starting. There were people who were willing to go through that pain and I think they would agree they were well rewarded but I understand some people want different things from their careers.

However, the moment someone would've announced that this was the reality of the situation I'd have walked out the door, because that is NOT normal under any circumstance.

I've been working in HFT for nearly ten years, in multiple different roles. I've met well over a hundred developers in the business, have at least a dozen I'd call friends, who are spread over nearly as many companies at this point in time. Most folks have had overwhelmingly positive experiences in the industry. Like anything there are exceptions, but I've seen no evidence of a systemic problem in the field. I know a few people who left my firm to go to Facebook and found it more stressful there, for instance. Certainly, I've worked with very very experienced ex-gamedevs, who would say unequivocally that developer abuse is a far bigger systemic issue in game dev than in finance.

Obviously it's fine to post your take but it should be tempered by the relative amount of experience you have.

when i interviewed for netflix i had to study their ridiculous culture document and found out it was a cult. i heard terrible stories of people being insulted openly. and you have to deal with endless leetcode bullshit interviews at FAANG which have nothing to do with your job and which disregards the years of experience you’ve built up all in the name of interviewing efficiency.

FAANG people don’t understand performance or latency anyway. they are focused on other things typically.

Tell that to the hippie pinko commies. I love trading firms and their culture. What I don't like is IBM style artificial pushing of "company values" and the kind of dystopian "sensitivity training" right out of an orwell novel.