That would surprise me. I have attended targeted career fairs with both FAANGs and national labs recruiting, and the national labs give off way more 'work-life balance' vibes. Plus, as the largest bureaucracy in the history of the world, the federal government isn't a good place to get a high return on brain damage when you want to actually get something done.
Having said that, the national labs do seem like good places to go geek out in your own advanced intellectual cul-de-sac.
FAANG's currently have a problem with ideological mono-culture. I dont know if recruitment has exactly suffered because of that, $$$$$ can allow for a lot of suppression of personal beliefs, but I do know a few people that have outright refused to work in those companies because of that, who are pretty excellent programmers
Using open source to judge quality seems wild. Maybe people just have no interest in maintaining an open source project. Looking from the outside at some of the stuff people put up with, it doesn't look worth it at all. I'll just work privately
As the sole maintainer of a popular open source NASA project (and contributor to several others), I can say that my open source work reflects very poorly on my work overall. We have a real problem in that there is a drive to open source things, but there is no money at all to support open sourced work. As soon as the open sourced work is no longer something I use day to day, I have to either maintain it on my personal time or it gets abandoned.
NIST and other government institutes are not known for open source work mainly because most of their work is a combination of science and technology communication. They deal in publications, conferences, and reference datasets. In my industry, NIST and the NIH produce the most important R&D reference datasets in the world, and everyone else looks to them for guidance. With that said, the NIH also occasionally produces world class software too (NCBI BLAST, etc.) although they do have some issues with parts of their software engineering culture being a bit out of date.
That question is pretty meaningless unless you can somehow measure the quality of an engineer. Is it the engineer who can build systems nobody else can, the one who can build the cheapest system that performs to spec, the one that can work well in a team, the one that is always available, the one that can teach others, etc etc etc etc. I'm sure anyone can think of many more aspects to being a good engineer.
I bet NASA and NIST have a great bunch of quality all-round engineers, but I'd be surprised if they were better at leetcode than the average FAANG dev. After all, FAANG devs have literally been filtered through an "are they good at leetcode" process. FAANG may be full of money chasers, but if the way to get more money there is by "being a good engineer" that does not mean much.
Feds have some of the most useless engineers/bureaucrats in the world. They do have a very, very tiny amount of mission motivated folks who are the best of the best, but that number is a rounding error. Ask anyone who has left.
Not firing folks, low pay, focus on the best work life balance in history, heavy affirmative action, politics, and having to work hard to carry the coasters isn’t an environment that naturally attracts skill and competence. Work 500% harder than the next guy and get the same promotion. No thanks.
The gov and contractors, like it or not, are jobs programs first and foremost. A remarkably effective jobs program if you just measure folks employed and not output.
tbihl|3 years ago
Having said that, the national labs do seem like good places to go geek out in your own advanced intellectual cul-de-sac.
r00fus|3 years ago
Seriously - why does this not mean they're the best engineers (as opposed to the most prolific).
phpisthebest|3 years ago
prepend|3 years ago
Maybe there are some super great private projects but I expect those amazing capabilities would still be evident in the stuff that is put out.
Note, there’s some good stuff out of NIST and NASA (check out open.nasa.gov) but I don’t see things being handed off to Apache and stuff.
tayo42|3 years ago
0xffff2|3 years ago
ak217|3 years ago
WJW|3 years ago
I bet NASA and NIST have a great bunch of quality all-round engineers, but I'd be surprised if they were better at leetcode than the average FAANG dev. After all, FAANG devs have literally been filtered through an "are they good at leetcode" process. FAANG may be full of money chasers, but if the way to get more money there is by "being a good engineer" that does not mean much.
mxkopy|3 years ago
rhexs|3 years ago
Not firing folks, low pay, focus on the best work life balance in history, heavy affirmative action, politics, and having to work hard to carry the coasters isn’t an environment that naturally attracts skill and competence. Work 500% harder than the next guy and get the same promotion. No thanks.
The gov and contractors, like it or not, are jobs programs first and foremost. A remarkably effective jobs program if you just measure folks employed and not output.
sgtnoodle|3 years ago