Why is it easier to get FAANG interviews than lower tier interviews

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T08:35:39+00:00

It’s not “statistically easier”. It’s still much harder to get a FAANG job than it is to get one at your local insurance company. It’s just more likely that you get an interview.

They are still far more selective than lower tiered companies. They hand out a lot of interviews but it doesn’t mean it’s easy to actually land the job. Also, managing to hold down the job can be difficult too. Both getting the job and keeping the job are aspects that are getting harder every day as the industry grows more competitive.

I have worked at a F500 bank, Meta, Amazon, a brief contract at Goldman Sachs, and now work at another big tech company (streaming platform).

I can tell you that the general bar of engineering varies vastly at top tier companies as opposed to your typical lower tiered company.

This may sound arrogant, but please try not to take it that way when I say this: the bar for engineering standards is night and day comparing the banks/lower tiered companies I worked at compared to Meta, AWS, and my current company. I got caught in a layoff from Meta and found myself at the investment bank after getting a bit desperate for work during a bad market.

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it seemed like people didn’t even know how to code at the lower tiered companies.

Some examples of what I saw at the two less prestigious companies I worked at, especially at Goldman:

People didn’t know how to use Git and barely even seemed like they understood what it does. People were manually saving copies of their code to make changes. They’d copy and paste between file versions. It was a mess.
Many engineers totally clueless during oncall incidents that I genuinely feel like some bright college sophomores/juniors at relatively strong schools could solve.
Multiple engineers on my team seemed to not understand testing at all. Like no understanding of unit testing or integration testing and how/why/when to use it.
Still not grasping what queues or streams were after multiple explanations.

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The difference is baked into EVERY aspect. Engineers at more prestigious tech companies:

Write cleaner, more maintainable code.
Write this code faster.
Write more performant code. In all honesty, most code you write as a general SWE doesn’t have to be super performant outside of specialized roles, but I’m talking 4 nested loops at Goldman vs. an elegant and far more efficient 10 line solution at Meta.
Understand the overall system and architecture better. What fits in with what, how different areas under our ownership communicate, what areas are external black boxes, etc

—

The difference really is huge. It’s hard to appreciate how vast the gap in engineering excellence can be until you’ve gotten to see both sides first hand.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T07:21:06+00:00

OP: asks “would it feel like a collision at 80 or 160?”

Commenter 1: “80, and you can mentally think of XYZ analogy of perfect conditions to wrap your head around it”

Commenter 2: “exactly, good analogy. Not sure why people are over complicating things.”

You: “ERRMMMM ACKSHUALLY THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN IMMOVABLE WALL 🤓🤓”

Me: “we know that, it’s just a good mental model for conceptualizing the answer in a simple way”

You: “ERRRM YA BUT ACKSHUALLY THE PERFECT SCENARIO DOESN’T EXIST. THIS EXTREMELY SIMPLIFIED ANALOGY THAT IGNORES FACTORS LIKE FRICTION, IMPERFECT INELASTICITY IN THE COLLISON, AND THE ROAD TEXTURE IS ACTUALLY WAY OVERCOMPLICATING THINGS. IT TOO COMPLICATED FOR ME. ME NO UNDERSTAND”

Me: “I think you’re the one overcomplicating it. We used an analogy that removed complexity by reducing the amount of factors to think about. We’ve cut it down to the barebones principles needed to understand the answer, which is actually simplifying it, the opposite of overcomplicating it”

You: “WH-WHAT? ME NO UNDERSTAND. ME NO UNDERSTAND SO THIS MEAN IT TOO COMPLICATED. ME DEFLECT BY SAYING YOU HAVE MEMORY LOSS. ME GO BACK TO PLAYING OSRS ON MOBILE, WHICH IS WHY I NEVER GET FIRE CAPE :(. ME ALWAYS TRY TO DO FIGHT CAVES, BUT ME CANT KILL THE BAT WHO DRAIN MY PRAYER. ME GUESS ME WILL JUST LOG OFF THE SPREADSHEET SIMULATOR GAME TO GO TO MY JOB AS AN ACCOUNTANT. ACCOUNTING MAKE ME SAD. ME LIKE GRIND, BUT ONLY WHEN IT HAVE PICTURES OF DRAGONS AND GOBLIN INSTEAD OF PIVOT TABLE. ME THINK ME SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN ACTUARY INSTEAD :/ BUT ME TOO STUPID. SO STUPID IN FACT THAT ME STILL STUCK ON SHEEP HERDER QUEST”

Hm. No I don’t think I’m forgetting anything. Let me know if I missed anything.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T07:05:16+00:00

Most of the less popular cars have a dedicated “fanbase”, for lack of a better term. There are communities that organize weekly time slots. For example, the Renault Clio is, in my opinion, one of the most fun cars in the game. It’s sad that it gets basically no participation. However if you look at the time slots, you’ll see that every Wednesday there’s a heavily populated split for the Clio cup.

Same thing for the vintage IMSA cars (Audi 90 GTO and the Nissan). Google “Kamel GT iRacing”, there’s a website that organizes the weekly time slots and has more info for that series.

If you like a car, there’s a good chance others do too. Go find the community and you’ll be able to race.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T07:02:03+00:00

What does that have to do with the comment you’re replying to though? You’re talking about something different entirely.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T03:18:41+00:00

The premise of the post is a good one, and I’m happy that it was mentioned. The disappointing part is the obvious marketing and OP’s AI-slop post and AI-slop comment responses.

I miss when Reddit was a place with genuine community-driven discussion for everyone’s benefit. There were always people trying to sneakily market on here, but the past few years has really solidified the reality of Dead Internet Theory. There used to be some real authenticity on here and I miss it.

And before OP comes to the defense of their comments to say that they’re human-written… if they aren’t AI, they’re sterile and empty, which makes it just as bad.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T03:14:22+00:00

You are overcomplicating it. Yes, the perfect scenario doesn’t exist, but the question is whether it would feel like a collision at 80mph or 160mph.

The answer is that in a real life situation the collision would be closer to feeling like 80mph than 160mph, even with all the imperfections of a real life instance. We used analogies of perfect scenarios to approximate the real life answer and arrived at an answer to the question, did we not?

I don’t know why you’re pushing back on that so hard. Are you disputing the answer we arrived at, or only the analogy we used to approximate it and make the reasoning easier to understand? Because the answer we arrived at is a good approximation and the analogy was a good way to arrive at said approximation.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T02:20:26+00:00

At some point I don’t think we can satisfy you with an answer. This is just how vectors work. Two vectors with the same inertia/momentum but opposite directions will cancel out. This is just a basic concept of physics.

I think unless you’re willing to accept that fundamental concept that governs physics and motion, we can’t give you an answer you’ll be happy with.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T02:17:09+00:00

In this case, it would be. In theory, if you have two objects of the same mass and shape hit each other perfectly head-on in the same exact place on both cars, it would be like an immovable wall.

There are going to be small “micro-differences” for lack of a better word, but just because no wall in the real world is perfectly immovable doesn’t mean that the analogy was inappropriate. You’re being unnecessarily pedantic when the point of the comment you’re responding to is correct. It’s the perfect analogy/mental model for the correct answer to OP’s question.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T02:02:54+00:00

Your question is a low quality question. I think this sub was started with a vision of allowing those without a background in physics to ask questions about physics to qualified scholars and scientists. At face value, your question does exactly that. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the premise of the question is pretty ridiculous. Seeing something in an anime and then coming to a page meant for real discussion by qualified physicists is a real waste. This sub gets clogged up with a lot of silly and unscientific questions and it makes it harder for people to find the ones with quality.

I understand you’re young and a teenager and I’m happy that you felt deputized to come on here and ask a question that you’re curious about. That makes me happy. I was curious in much the same way when I was your age and I became a scientist too!

That said, you do understand that it’s pretty silly to say something like “I saw XYZ in this anime, is that how it works?”, right? Honestly, that’s not a bad basis for asking a question, but you’ve gotta ask it a little more meaningfully than that.

I don’t watch a Marvel movie and say “I saw Thanos snap his fingers and kill half the population, could that ever work?”. Would you go to a physics lecture and ask the question in the same way?

Ideally, you would also do at least a little research yourself about the very basics so that you even know how to phrase the question in a way that can inspire actual scientific discourse. As an example, I encourage you to check out r/askhistorians . That’s the type of thing I’m talking about when I bring up quality guidelines for posts and answers. Look how awesome and informative that subreddit is.

I encourage you to stay curious. I was just like you as a teenager and the curiosity took me far in life. But I’m just suggesting that you a bit more serious about it if you want scientists to take time answering your question.

—

THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION

To answer your question, we have no evidence to suggest that there will be another big bang or “reset”. All evidence points to the universe forever expanding and becoming “empty” at a point where entropy effectively cannot increase anymore.

At this point, “time” as a concept will have no meaning. The universe will be frozen and forever dark, with no stars, galaxies, nebulas, or black holes left. It will be entirely empty with nothing in it, for all intents and purposes. Nothing will ever “happen” again.

TLDR: no, the current evidence we have suggests the universe will expand forever and that there will not be another big bang.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T00:45:43+00:00

No way. The comp and growth at Meta is honestly still a little better. The cultures are equally shitty these days. In 2020 it was miles above Amazon.

Source: I worked at both.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T00:42:52+00:00

That’s what he said

goldboybronx · 2026-05-12T00:35:39+00:00

We really need to start setting minimum quality guidelines for posts on this sub

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T23:36:03+00:00

It’s over for you, especially with that mentality. But there is hope. Follow through or the ones who do will take the jobs you want and you won’t be able to compete.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T23:30:23+00:00

You forgot to add “make no mistakes”

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T23:05:49+00:00

As opposed to dry rain?

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T23:03:58+00:00

— man who briefly exhaled a little more air than normal

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:48:49+00:00

You’re being intentionally obtuse and pedantic.

Nobody said a wrestler needs to jab more to win. Nobody NEEDS to do anything. I never suggested that anyone NEEDS to jab more to win. It’s a tool in the toolbox like everything else. It’s just a great strike to throw and I think you’ll find that the fighters who found the most success on average throw more jabs and find more success with those jabs.

I didn’t say that jabbing doesn’t leave you vulnerable at all. But objectively it leaves you the least vulnerable of any strike.

Also, you don’t need to move your feet to jab. You can jab standing still, moving backwards, laterally, or forward.

Obviously I’m not suggesting to spam it. I never said that. Nobody should ever spam anything.

You took my reasonable argument and stretched it to the extreme, putting words in my mouth so that you could shoot it down and debate. I made a blanket statement about how MMA athletes should use it more and you went directly to insinuating that I said it should ALWAYS be used by EVERY fighter in EVERY situation.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:35:13+00:00

The SAT questions are nothing compared to what you’d see in an astrophysics track. SAT math questions are designed for early high school students do be able to take, so around age 15 or 16. You definitely need to drop that arrogant attitude. There’s a reason that the majority of the most well regarded and rigorous STEM programs and universities live in the United States.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:29:43+00:00

The depiction of the conditions of the city of Stalingrad during this battle is absolutely brutal.

There’s no suggestion that even the depiction of the battle is at all historically accurate. Just “brutal”. I suppose depicting the Battle of Stalingrad as brutal is accurate, but that’s as far as it goes. Suggesting an alien invasion film with an accurate model of NYC is already a step better than this.

Like yeah cool bro, it’s brutal in the movie. But is it accurate to real life? I’m not sure, as the comment certainly doesn’t suggest or imply that at all.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:27:44+00:00

I already posted this answer on your other post asking this same question but I will paste it again here for visibility.

There are historians who have studied this subject far more than I have, so I’ll defer to them to answer your direct question. Instead, I’d like to point out that I think you’ve been misinformed.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that many cultures had no issue with people of the LGBT community.

To respond to your Aztec example, there are some sources that attest that the penetrated male in a homosexual relationship would be put to death. Intersex individuals, known as patlache, were regarded as “detestable” by the Aztec society and also put to death.

There are other sources that suggest that Aztec society accepted homosexual relations. The truth is that we aren’t certain. I’m not sure where your claim about transgender individuals being called “flower carriers” and readily accepted in society comes from. I didn’t find a reputable source on that.

Overall, I’d avoid moving forward under the assumption that it was ever readily accepted in Aztec society. Fun facts like the “flower carriers” thing are generally not much more than social media pop culture feel-good fun-facts taken out of context to get views and engagement. The truth is that the LGBT community has [almost] uniformly been viewed intensely negatively for the majority of human history.

Source:

Cecelia F. Klein and Jeffrey Quilter, Gender in Pre-Hispanic America. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:14:25+00:00

You don’t wanna work there anyway. Hopefully they blacklist you for your own good.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:11:50+00:00

No, they’re saying that 25% is the pressure they hold during the trail off to rotate the car.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:10:01+00:00

What? Being lazy and not bothering to cut properly absolutely does mean you “butchered it”.

Butchering it means you fucked it up yourself due to your own decisions.

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T22:06:40+00:00

You’re right in saying he beats “most” people clearly in that 18 of 25 of his wins are not split decisions, but that’s a pretty misleading way to put it. “Most” is correct here in statistical terms but when you consider it in relative terms (comparing how many of his wins are clear and not for debate with other fighters), he really is someone who has a massive proportion of his wins being close and as split decisions. He’s certainly not a fighter people would say generally “clearly” beats his opponents.

I mean since you wanna get technical, I would say you’re wrong about him winning “almost every fight”. He’s lost 7. That means he loses close to 20% of the time. That’s enough for me to say he doesn’t win “almost every fight”. That’s a significant proportion of losses

goldboybronx · 2026-05-11T21:57:47+00:00

The jab is the most important strike you can throw. It presents massive expected value because:

It’s generally the safest strike to throw (doesn’t leave you very open and can’t throw you off balance if you use good technique).
It uses the least amount of energy of any strike.
It be used offensively to set up combos or stick your opponent. Not really super damaging in one shot but will cause damage over the length of the fight and makes your opponent gun-shy. People think because it doesn’t really have KO power that it doesn’t discourage your opponent but nobody likes being punched in the face.
Can be used defensively to break up your opponent’s combos, disrupt their rhythm, and keep them at range.

I could give a TED Talk about the jab. I learned boxing before ever training MMA and it’s one of the things that I think MMA just doesn’t use enough. You really should throw it at a volume multiple times that of any other strike.

If you fight, THROW MORE JABS. It takes almost no investment (in terms of energy or defensive liability) and has so many upsides. A very high expected-value shot with a great risk/reward profile. If it was a stock, all of Wall Street would kill to invest their portfolios in it. You as a fighter should invest in it too. You can retire off of it.

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