> Not in my opinion. These kind of companies ask you to give 100% of yourself every single day.
No, I understand can understand how someone would come away with that conclusion based on common patterns in the industry, but I think you're conflating two things.
First, companies want teams that deliver value. If evaluation is based more on vibes than actual output, that's a management failure. Its nuanced, because bad vibes can really hurt teams a lot, so it's not that vibes don't matter, but if the source of the vibes is that management is clueless and doesn't understand the pain points on the front lines, then that's the bigger issue. As a junior engineer it can be hard to distinguish, but just understand that good management exists and is out there, it's not all pointy hairs (even if the language is sometimes the same, after all pointy hairs have to cargo cult off of someone).
Second is how much a company asks of you. Once you rise up the ranks in any sizable company you'll realize an incredible amount of effort is wasted just due to the overhead of coordinating many individuals. In these types of environments it's more about focusing on the right things rather than overall effort. As Steve Jobs said, "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to to , We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do". Entire teams can be net negative because no one calls out the elephant in the room. While it's true, that if you are successful in a high performance org, more will be asked of you, it's also true that good leaders value solid contributors even when they set some boundaries.
So there are really two strategies in a large org: one is to do the bare minimum and keep your head down, in that case avoiding high performing orgs is probably a good idea. But at the end of the day your entire job and career is at the mercy of the beancounters waking up one day and realizing you are dead weight. Alternatively, you can adopt a growth mentality, do your best every day, and see where it takes you. The latter path does mean you might need to set some boundaries and say no to people at times. Sure it's awkward, but in the grand scheme of things this builds a stronger network and sets you up for long-term success far better than playing defense because you see the employer-employee relationship as fundamentally adversarial. I think that worldview makes sense from a physical labor workforce, but it's really self-defeating for software engineers because at the end of the day our output is what our code does (hence every IC is "managing" the tech output), not how much time we put in creating it.
No, I understand can understand how someone would come away with that conclusion based on common patterns in the industry, but I think you're conflating two things.
First, companies want teams that deliver value. If evaluation is based more on vibes than actual output, that's a management failure. Its nuanced, because bad vibes can really hurt teams a lot, so it's not that vibes don't matter, but if the source of the vibes is that management is clueless and doesn't understand the pain points on the front lines, then that's the bigger issue. As a junior engineer it can be hard to distinguish, but just understand that good management exists and is out there, it's not all pointy hairs (even if the language is sometimes the same, after all pointy hairs have to cargo cult off of someone).
Second is how much a company asks of you. Once you rise up the ranks in any sizable company you'll realize an incredible amount of effort is wasted just due to the overhead of coordinating many individuals. In these types of environments it's more about focusing on the right things rather than overall effort. As Steve Jobs said, "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to to , We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do". Entire teams can be net negative because no one calls out the elephant in the room. While it's true, that if you are successful in a high performance org, more will be asked of you, it's also true that good leaders value solid contributors even when they set some boundaries.
So there are really two strategies in a large org: one is to do the bare minimum and keep your head down, in that case avoiding high performing orgs is probably a good idea. But at the end of the day your entire job and career is at the mercy of the beancounters waking up one day and realizing you are dead weight. Alternatively, you can adopt a growth mentality, do your best every day, and see where it takes you. The latter path does mean you might need to set some boundaries and say no to people at times. Sure it's awkward, but in the grand scheme of things this builds a stronger network and sets you up for long-term success far better than playing defense because you see the employer-employee relationship as fundamentally adversarial. I think that worldview makes sense from a physical labor workforce, but it's really self-defeating for software engineers because at the end of the day our output is what our code does (hence every IC is "managing" the tech output), not how much time we put in creating it.