The experience of people you know flies directly in the face of my experience (not at FAANGs but similar caliber) and that of several hundreds of my friends and acquaintances who work at these companies.
Whatever the exceptions are, if you work at these places, you're living a GREAT life in the grand scheme of things.
Ask employees at Amazon, certain orgs at Apple, and Microsoft (at least pre-Nadella) how this always holds up. Ask workers at AAA gaming studios. It seems like in tech in exchange for high material compensation, the toll is sometimes high psychological and emotional pressure.
>> It seems like in tech in exchange for high material compensation, the toll is sometimes high psychological and emotional pressure.
Hard things are hard. Building something complex in a competitive environment is going to feel difficult because it is. The company can make it more or less painful and the good ones do a good job, but there's no way around it.
The alternative is not to do difficult things and thus have no pressure and no responsibility. By that definition, the homeless guy on the corner is the most relaxed person (and sometimes it's true, you see them chilled out, nobody depends on them and there's nothing for them to achieve) but if that resonates with you then you shouldn't be working at a company like that in the first place. Try working at the DMV instead - I am being a bit facetious but also serious, people chose their careers based in part of how much pressure/adventure/challenge they have an appetite for.
There's no success without risk, hard work and pressure. The top companies give you a chance to go for such success, they can't change the laws of gravity and somehow enable you to change the world without breaking a sweat.
> The company can make it more or less painful and the good ones do a good job, but there's no way around it.
Sure there is. There are corporate cultures that are needlessly toxic and abusive. Stack ranking at Microsoft was not necessary to their success. Uber's culture of harassment and unethical behavior was not necessary to their success. Amazon's burnout culture is not necessary to their success. AAA gaming death marches are not necessary to their success- or maybe it is to that industry, but they could at least pay overtime. Perhaps there are other companies that are better candidates for unionization than Google. But to pretend that every successful company's excesses and dark underbellies can be justified by "hard things are hard" is to excuse abuses and unprofessionalism that go unchecked. Because HR systems are insufficient, workers organize.
Whatever the exceptions are, if you work at these places, you're living a GREAT life in the grand scheme of things.
Conversations about other employers not relevant.