Ask HN: People who rejected a FAANG offer. Why?
(I&#x27;d rather share this anonymously, so this is a throwaway account.)<p>I&#x27;m a software engineer and technical manager with just shy of 20 years of experience. I&#x27;ve never received a job offer from a FAANG company, but I&#x27;ve said &quot;no thanks&quot; to Google recruiters a number of times over the last ~10 years, and several years ago I did an initial remote interview with Netflix before declining their offer of an onsite interview. Here are my own personal reasons against working for a FAANG company:<p>Facebook&#x2F;Google: Surveillance capitalism at its finest; working for one of these would be using my talents to further the greatest privacy-violating data collection regime (with virtually zero government oversight) the world has ever seen. I&#x27;d rather give up programming entirely and work retail.<p>Amazon: less objectionable than FB&#x2F;Goog, but only slightly. They treat their non-engineer employees like complete crap, and I&#x27;ve heard that the quality of life even on the engineering side is very much dependent on the org you end up in and your manager.<p>Apple: Their privacy game is much stronger than any of the above, and I use their devices daily. Their walled gardens and locked-down devices mean they are a far cry from the hacker-friendly Apple I remember as a kid in the 80s. Their culture also seems very secretive and rather cult-like which leaves a bad taste in my mouth (though maybe this is improving since Steve&#x27;s death?)<p>Netflix: by far the least objectionable FAANG, many fewer privacy concerns and the product is good IMHO. However, they have a hard policy against remote work, at least for the team(s) I was looking at, and I don&#x27;t want to live anywhere near SF Bay. This is the only reason I ended the interview process with them.<p>Aside from all of the above and even if you disagree with everything I said, FAANGs are just so huge that the incremental value you add by joining is likely to be tiny. I&#x27;ve spent the last ~10 years working at startups to mid-size companies (from 5 up to 200 people) and I feel that my work is much more impactful than it could ever be at a FAANG.