Silicon Valley Confessions
Anonymous confessions from tech.
I Interviewed at a FAANG Company and They Asked Me to Invert a Binary Tree on a Whiteboard
Invert a binary tree on a whiteboard. In assembly. While crying. The interviewer ate a burrito with the camera on. I heard every bite.
Agile Standups Became So Long We Had to Schedule a Standup to Discuss the Standup Problem
Standups take 47 minutes. We scheduled a pre-standup. The pre-standup takes 47 minutes. We now have standup-ception.
I Quit My Job to Become a Full Time Open Source Maintainer and Now I Live in a Cardboard Box
14,000 GitHub stars. 14 sponsors. $47 per month total. One sponsor sends $1 per month with a note: please fix issue 2847.
Our Company All Hands Has a Live DJ But We Cannot Afford a Second Monitor for New Hires
All hands has a live DJ. Second monitors were rejected by finance. The DJ costs more than 47 monitors per event. Quarterly all hands.
The Board Rejected My Promotion Because My GitHub Contribution Graph Was Not Green Enough
Promotion denied: GitHub graph not green enough. I work on private repos. Board said private contributions lack visible impact.
We Hired a Famous Tech YouTuber as VP of Engineering Who Makes Video Essays About Our Architecture
Famous YouTuber VP of Engineering. Architecture decisions are 47-minute video essays with clickbait thumbnails. The comments are brutal.
Our AI Ethics Board Consists Entirely of the AI Itself
AI Ethics Board is GPT-5. It approved all our questionable decisions. It cited its own previous rulings as binding precedent.
The New Grad Negotiated Better Equity Than the Staff Engineer and Nobody Knows How
New grad got better equity than Staff Engineer. The new grad's uncle is on the board. Discovered at the holiday party. Awkward.
Our Performance Review System Has 47 Criteria Including Vibes Per Quarter
47 review criteria. Vibes accounts for 20 percent. Nobody can define vibes quantitatively. The calibration meeting took 8 hours.
We Have 14 Different Slack Channels for Discussing the Same Production Incident
14 Slack channels for one incident. Resolved in 10 minutes. Post mortem discussion: 3 weeks and counting. Resolution: add more monitoring.