> Right now at work I've taken on a ticket that should be simple, but I just cannot understand why it's not working in the massive ecosystem and integrations that exists for this app.

Ask for help

> Also on a sidenote, I'm a bit disappointed in the sense that I expected more from FAANG. The quality of the apps I'm seeing seems vastly technically overengineered

You have not been capable of fixing bugs in simple React projects yet, I don't think you are in a good position to make this judgement.

A lot of people are on stimulants there. You are going to have to load up on your stimulant scripts and get crackin'.

Hey there. I spent a couple of years at a FAANG as an engineering manager. Impostor syndrome is extremely, EXTREMELY common. I had it, my peers had it, my direct reports had it. It's normal. Senior-level folks from non-big-tech companies tended to get hit especially hard, as their prior experiences and successes did not necessarily translate to FAANG processes and expectations. It's definitely a bit of a sink-or-swim situation, especially if you came in at a senior level, but take a few breaths, realize that everyone goes through this, it does get better, and be kind to yourself. Good luck!

Stay. If you want to talk, reach out to me.

(Email in my profile is anonymous for HN, but will respond from my gmail)

Just wait till you go through your first performance review, if you think everyone’s too busy for you now, you’re in for a treat!

You are in a new environment and the problems that need solving are unique to the business.

There is a lot to learn. Probably more than anyplace else you have worked.

The work is hard. Probably harder than anything you have ever done.

You were hired by people who know these things and they hired you because they believe you will be able to handle learning a lot and working on hard things.

In addition, they know everything takes longer than it would if the problems were ordinary.

The documentation and tools are only engineered to meet the business criteria and get the hard things done. Not based luxurious theories.

In the end, FAANG is enterprise…the problems are not going to be obvious and the optimizations are for longer term time frames.

There is a lot to learn and everyone who has stayed via competence knows that. Good luck.

Personally it feels like every issue gets shoved under the "imposter syndrome" umbrella, but I'd say you are just feeling a bit of cultural shock or cultural mismatch.

The other thing is software developed by large teams tend to be complex, and a new-comer needs more time to understand what's happening. Onboarding can be a very chaotic process especially for teams who don't specifically put a lot of effort into making it smooth for new-comers. This isn't imposter syndrome but rather something that your team probably needs to do better.

The complexity you are probably going to have to get used to. Maybe some of it is unnecessary, but just like the naïve developer trying to refactor/rewrite a complex piece of code realizes, the extra exceptions and special cases were added for some reason and without them the code breaks in various niche situations. (Or maybe they're really unnecessary! The thing is until you get a full grasp of the code, you won't know)

Otherwise just give it a couple months and see how well you adjust. I think just keep an open mind and don't assume things only because other people have different backgrounds from yours. (I mean, what does age have to do with this? You're only a couple years older than those "fresh 20 year old kids", not even "old"...)

You got into FAANG, how bad could you be?

Yes, I was at Amazon for a total of 8 months. I found the environment, tooling, and systems way too bloody complicated. Brought down some systems when doing a task because I put insufficient data in a config file. But I think what bothered me the most was that I wasn’t really assigned any tasks for the first 6 months and didn’t really understand what the team was working on. Definitely one of the lowest points in my life. I don’t think it was imposter syndrome though, I just think I wasn’t a good fit - hence why I left.

Chill, that’s just typical when moving from fast and small organisation to a big one.

I still remember when I moved to my own startup from a very regulated finance and realised I can just install a new python library on a server without a month long approval process :D

Surprised someone actually got hired!

FAANG was only good for the name and the money. Now I would say neither. I think we are now in a post-FAANG world. Maybe at the highest levels sure you’ll clean up but not as FEE. Honestly there are a ton of private companies now (stripe, Databricks, the GenAI companies, etc where the name carries a lot of weight and you can clean up well if you have a few years).

I’m not at a FAANG, but a F250 company, and it’s the same way. It used to be pretty stable and things made sense. However, one they started bringing in a bunch of people fresh out of school, and gave them the keys to the kingdom to “modernize”, everything became a convoluted mess. They don’t understand what it means to support something in production through its lifecycle, and don’t care, because they always have one foot out the door.

It’s probably worth sticking it out, as having 1-2 years there will look good on a resume, while a month will not.

I’ve dealt with imposter syndrome most of my career. You never really know how you’re being perceived by others until they tell you. I went into a review a couple years ago 100% certain that I was going to be shredded, because I felt like I had really been phoning it in and the boss had made some comments very early on when he took over the team. When I showed up to the review I was met with 45 minutes of praise. After it was over I just sat there for 15 minutes in shock. I couldn’t seem to integrate the false reality my imposter syndrome created in my head with the reality of what just happened.

Your expectations for yourself and the company might need time to align with the reality of how the business actually runs. Most companies are way more dysfunctional than anyone would want to believe. This is why Dilbert was such a popular and relatable comic for so many workers.

If you are at Faang and feeling imposter syndrome, maybe you just need to get better at things. I actually rejected multiple offers from Faang back in the day because they were so mediocre.

I spent a few years at Apple, a decade+ in AWS, and now at another mega cloud co. IME expect 3 months to understand whats going on and become useful. Ask questions or “raise your hand” when stuck for a day, you should have an “onboarding buddy” coworker and manager who are invested in your success. Keep track of what youre doing, when youve asked for help, and what youve accomplished on a daily or weekly basis. Use this as a (bi)weekly 1:1 topic to set expectations with your manager.

Re: complications, increase your sense of scale beyond anything you imagined. Youre now inside of an industrial process. Depending on your company youve gone from ~100 coworkers to literally 10-40,000 other SDEs working in the same environment. There are probably more dev teams than previous coworkers. All sorts of things get complicated at that scope.

Check my profile if my experience is relevant and youd like a virtual coffee chat.