The definition of "good" in my engineering journey

There is this weird thing about Twitter/X and YouTube. It made me feel like everyone either works at FAANG, has worked at FAANG, or aspires to work at FAANG. Well, it’s not a bad ambition, mind you, and the compensation there certainly doesn’t hurt! But anyway, a little spoiler alert: this isn’t really an article about how I changed my mind and decided FAANG isn’t worth it. It’s a bit more nuanced than that.

When I arrived in France a few years ago, I got caught up in this trend. I came from a country where these opportunities were never an option I would have imagined.

“In the benninging”¹

Back in Madagascar, I started my career at a small company. We basically ran like a startup: lots of work, legacy code, nothing near the bleeding edge in terms of technical setup, but it had the advantage of steeping me very early in the importance of having a mind for the product, not just for the technical part.

Then my next company went in the other direction: the product was pretty much settled and decided by people in a room we were not part of. As the technical people, we were supposed to deliver technically good products. The standards of code and technical engineering were far beyond what I had seen at my first company. It was not a rare thing for me to get rag-dolled during a code review session, which pleased me a lot too, though in a different way.

Up to that point, my vision was not to be among the world-class people. My brain did not even conceive of that, because it was not something I was hearing around me. I was content with just becoming a senior there and then, if God willed it, even becoming a CTO eventually. A net salary of €2,000 a month would have been a dream back then.

A whole new world

Then I went abroad for random reasons. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up to me. I became active on X. My YouTube algorithm changed. This whole new world of possibilities got me very excited. People talked to me about FAANG during after-work meetups! “FAANG? You mean there is a possibility to work at Google? THE Google? The web search engine I use daily?” I reported back to a friend in Madagascar. She told me that it would be great if I got into Microsoft, because “it’s cool to tell people [she] ha[s] a friend at Microsoft.”

I began learning, and reading. I read the book “The Software Engineer’s Guidebook” by Gergely Orosz (I’ll surely mangle that name in pronunciation). I found out what working at FAANG looks like and feels like. But I also found out the statistics on admission rates. At the time of writing, I’m 32. I was 29 back in the day. If I were 23, it would definitely be the kind of mountain I’d want to conquer. Now at 32, it’s still exciting, but it seems I’m more grounded. And I’m not a junior anymore. If I enter FAANG, I won’t target the entry level, which will make everything even harder: I’d be competing with people who have already over-prepared for that job. And to add to that, each of these companies has its own way of working. Every single one of them. FAANG is still a dream job. But I’ll need to adapt my strategy to fit each company’s culture, for a dream that is not guaranteed to come to pass.

Okay, breathe a little!

Then I sat down.

What do I want? Go to big tech!

Why? Because it’s cool. Because of the prestige of working at big tech. Because of money… of course, it’s also about money!

Will I be happy then? Probably!

Will I feel accomplished? What kind of question is that? That’s obvious!

But for how long? Well, I don’t know yet, but I’ll know when I get there.

Fair enough! But let’s take a step back, shall we?

Am I happy now? Well, I’m certainly not miserable, but I’m not the happiest in the world.

Am I feeling accomplished? No.

When did I last feel happy and accomplished? When I got my visa to France and moved to Paris!

How long did that feeling last? I’d say a solid three months! Then my baseline adjusted to the new normal and I felt just like everyone else.

But I’m still “accomplished” from the perspective of my friends back home, right? Yes, I am! But I don’t measure myself against their perspective. I measure myself against the standard around me. Wait!

Nice, now going back to our initial topic. Isn’t there a possibility that, when I get into big tech, I will just be ecstatic from the dopamine rush of the first few months, and then adjust to my surrounding standards, making me feel just “normal” again? Now I get it! This too shall pass, right?

In pursuit of happiness

Does it mean that it’s not worth pursuing because it’s a fleeting sensation?

Well, I may have an answer to that. Let’s go back into my memories to check where the problem is!

Ah yes, accomplishment! Accomplishment and happiness always went hand in hand for me in the past. It’s when I topped the score in my class as a kid, or when I thought I did a good drawing. It’s this feeling when I finished my first C program as an extracurricular back in high school, or just when I landed a job abroad in relatively recent memory. I think happiness is worth pursuing! We only live once. The issue is when it’s a long-term thing that may or may not happen (I know, cringe!).

I know now that I’m happiest when I feel like I’m good at something. The FAANG job dangles that feeling like a promise, but chasing the job would be missing the forest for the trees. That feeling comes from something broader, and that is what I chase.

That’s it! As a software engineer, I’ll make it my sole objective to get so good it feels unfair!

My definition of “good”

Well, this is the kind of question one needs to answer for themselves at least once in their life. I’m not a kid anymore. To point out the obvious, my life is now 80% intermingled with my work, which itself is 100% intermingled with my skills. I don’t fully control my work: whether I get promoted or not, whether I get a raise or not, whether I work at the company I want or not. But I can control my skills.

If you paid especially close attention to my “about” page, you may have noticed that I mentioned front-end, back-end and also “product mindset” while avoiding mentioning “full-stack”. That was intentional. And I know I’m handicapping myself with recruiters by doing that².

Anyway, I chose not to call myself full-stack because it’s a job title, not a skill. It describes how wide you work and says nothing about how deep. I already mentioned that I was a Rails and TS engineer, and that’s already more than I wanted to put. My initial thought was just “Software engineer”, but Claude hammered into me the idea of at least naming my main stack, so I conceded.

My problem with the label is that width is the only thing it measures, and width isn’t what I’m optimizing for. I’d rather name the few things I’m obsessed with right now, go deep on them, and be judged on that. That’s a statement about the shape of career I want, not about anyone who wears the title. Plenty of people are full-stack and excellent, and plenty of jobs need exactly that person.

My point is, I’m in pursuit of happiness and of getting good here, and for that reason I need to look beyond my immediate job requirements.

So, I have these points in sight right now:

• Security and infrastructure: Beyond knowing the basics, a.k.a. the OWASP Top 10, I’m actually interested in going deep into AppSec. Plans are subject to change, but what I have in mind is going through the PortSwigger Web Security Academy and maybe roaming around HackTheBox resources if time and motivation permit. In between, I may take an additional cloud security certification to complement my current cloud cert.
• Performance: In all its flavors! Did you know Figma wrote its core graphics and canvas engine in C++ and then compiled it to WebAssembly (WASM)? Crazy, and this hits home, since I’m also creating a canvas-based app (you’ll hear about it soon enough!) and that level of engineering excites me. But why stop here? Anything about performance is exciting. I have “High Performance Browser Networking” by Ilya Grigorik and “High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails” by Andrew Atkinson on my reading list.
• UI design: I know this one looks like the black sheep among my to-dos, but hear me out! I like good design and I hate bad design. And as weird as it may seem, front-end people are not necessarily good at UI. They are good at executing what the design team gives them. And it’s not to punch down on front-end people. Contrary to popular belief, front-end is not just about making pretty UIs: there’s state to manage, compliance with a dozen rules our Good Lord European Union has put upon us, and respect for Core Web Vitals, to name a few. But coming up with the UI/UX is a totally different skill. And knowing that will give me control over the whole development cycle of ultra-premium apps.

Those three are my pillars and my north stars (plural), and what I genuinely want to get good at. Of course it’s not the whole of software engineering, but it’s still something. Things I omitted are:

• Software craftsmanship: Useful, but past a certain point it becomes a cult I don’t want to identify with. Okay, I’m sold on writing tests. I hate writing them but we need them, and AI genuinely is a big help now in that department. Naming things properly: obviously. DDD: useful, arguably essential in the AI era; I know more about it than the average LinkedIn post and less than I ought to. Well, you get my point. Most of the rest is case-by-case but gets turned into liturgy. Writing good code isn’t my passion, it’s my obligation to my team and future me. But I’ll be frank: if an interview hinges on the latest Robert C. Martin, I’ll flunk it.
• Product ownership: I like discussing product. I’m not just saying that to be a boot-licker to recruiters. I genuinely do. But I don’t really see an angle to get deep enough into that thing. It’s not a laser-cut discipline like the rest of this list. There may be books about it, but I must say I’ve never bothered to look them up yet.
• AI engineering: This one is interesting, but I omitted it for a good reason. I think most of what we nowadays call AI engineering is just infrastructure and coding specialized around AI. So it’s just a product like anything else. As an AI engineer, you don’t really do the hard maths or the data modelling, and barely any fine-tuning, if at all. So I omitted it because, for me, it’s in there around performance, security and infrastructure. I actually purchased the book “AI Engineering” by Chip Huyen for that matter. And I also plan to get into LangGraph Academy.

This went on longer than I thought, but I’ve said it all. These three don’t map cleanly onto FAANG, and that’s the point: FAANG is one door that may or may not open, while the skills are mine either way. If the door opens, I’ll walk through it better prepared than I would have been chasing the door itself.

One caveat: I can plan this much because I currently live alone with practically zero obligations, and I’m loving every second of it. Ask me again when that changes. (I also lift and play video games, so yes, I have a life too, sir at the back, worried about my work-life balance!)

Next post will be more technical. Stay tuned!