Hiring Tech Talent for Startups in one Sprint: Part 2
AFANG Vs Ewedu
Most of you know AFANG as FAANG, but, for personal reasons, I prefer to refer to it as AFANG, and for clarity, I’d use it to refer to tech companies that started out as startups and have scaled into big multinationals. So in this case, AFANG would not be limited to Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google, but would also include companies operating on a similar scale, like Microsoft, Twitter, Airbnb and Uber. Ewedu on the other hand would be used to refer to startups as described in the previous chapter. I’ll let you know when to google these terms, just not yet.
AFANG companies are easily ranked the best companies to work for every year and that’s mostly owing to the fact that they have big benefits with a startup mindset. It’s an attempt at fusing the best of startups and corporates. This is easily accomplished due to their startup backgrounds and corporate level of revenues. Given this precedent, the laws of demand and supply would suggest that they are in fact significantly more difficult to get into than Ewedu companies right? Wrong! Sure enough, AFANG companies have a higher standard and skill level expectations of candidates, however, they do have a very clear pathway to success. There are lots of amazing resources online and offline to help navigate the hiring process of AFANG companies and this is largely due to the consistent and predictable interview process. The standard of entry is raised, but the barrier is kept consistent. Well, at least more consistent than Ewedu companies. You can almost always expect a preliminary assessment, two technical/coding assessments, one behavioural assessment and a system design assessment, the latter being often only for non-junior roles. The outcome of these interviews amount to an offer or not. Simple! Ok, not so easy, but it’s simple. If you read Gayle Laakmann McDowell’s books and immerse yourself in Leetcode and a few resources available freely online, you have a decent chance at success. It’s not all perfect with AFANG companies as there are other topics that could come up within the process itself, such as the time it takes — often months — or various ongoing diversity/inclusivity conversations, but the straightforwardness of the process itself is what I’d like to highlight here.
Ewedu companies pride themselves with innovating quickly and sometimes hiring quickly, but not as efficiently. Almost every Ewedu company adopts the same work processes. They work in sprints, use project management tools, have a QA, devops, release process, daily standups, sprint plannings and reviews, retros, etc, but hiring isn’t nearly as consistent. The experience ranges from “quick and inadequate” to “excessively drawn out, disorganised and clumsy”. Some get it right, most don’t.
Compared to AFANG companies, one would expect a more straightforward, quintessentially startup hiring process, but what obtains most times is a clueless sequence of activities with a random, very likely non-representative outcome.
For an environment with significantly fewer benefits than AFANG companies, Ewedu companies tend to put candidates through a hellish process too frequently. I might be wrong, but having a $500 a year learning budget shouldn’t warrant much more stress than companies that dole out RSUs worth six figures. So while AFANG is a convenient acronym, Ewedu is a rather deliberate metaphor, intended to portray the unnecessarily drawn out hiring process often used by startups. You may now google the terms.
