hamstrung
To blur your background on Teams, go to background options while on a call. Click 'Blur'. Here are the steps if you get confused on the way:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-your-backg...
To start a meeting, either generate a meeting in the Calendar and it'll add a Teams call link in, or under the Calendar click 'Meet now' in the top right corner.
Although these companies create artificially high barriers, most of the work is pretty ordinary and my colleagues are pretty ordinary too. That's totally OK because people would be very unsatisfied and leave if they were working too long below their ability/aspiration.
Sure, there are the big throbbing brains here and there but that's maybe a few percent. Most SWEs are just stringing APIs together, doing boring YAML work or whiling away their days in meetings.
1. Product groups suck. Avoid those unless you want to feel the burn.
2. Avoid sales engineering where you are either billable, have targets or have a million customers.
3. Find a group/area going through lots of growth (cloud is the spotGCP/Azure/AWS). It's much easier to ride the macro waves. Avoid groups with lots of competition/in-fighting.
4. Make friends and be good company. People prefer good company over good workers.
5. The longer your tenure, the more likely you are able to engineer whatever role you want to have. You will also have the network to support you.
Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1053/
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
My F/T job at a FAANG adds up to about 10 hrs/week at most.. sometimes 15 hrs due to extra meetings. Could easily fit in another job, but would rather sit in the sun and read a book.
porn, instagram etc.