This is a common outsider view, and one that BigTechCorp's actively encourage. Outsiders don't see the long hours, stressful deadlines, office politics, they just see the colorful beanbag couches and free catered meals.

The beanbag chairs and foozball tables tend to have dust on them.

I had a friend that was a derivatives (remember them?) analyst at a big Wall St. firm.

She told me about how they brought catered meals to your desk, and arranged car services to take you home at ungodly hours.

It was all about keeping you at your desk.

She made damn good money, though.

But Apple doesn’t have beanbag couches or free catered meals.

Nor does Amazon, but people still line up to work in AWS. The compensation, the perception of working on something really big and important... it's a hell of a drug.

My impression is Amazon is mostly for people who don't land Google/Twitter/Facebook.

The quality curves mostly overlap (interview processes are noisy), but historically, Google has grabbed the very top -- the people who get offers everywhere. I think that's Facebook/Twitter now. I know fairly few really top people at Amazon -- the one-sided employment agreement, and harsh work conditions don't quite have the same appeal as work-life balance, fancy perks, and all the other stuff that comes with Facebook/Google/Twitter.

Compensation's similar, though, and about double what one would get outside of FAANG.

Not to forget the vesting schedules (initial grant, % by year)

Amazon: 5, 5, 40, 50

Google: 40, 30, 25, 5

Quite a difference in what they expect their employee tenure to be / be like I think.

Apple is somewhere in the middle: 25, 25, 25, 25

They do split it up, vesting every six months, so it’s actually 8 straight 12.5% chunks.

Google was even 25/y when i was there. I heard they switched to monthly now as did fb

Certain truth to that.

When someone here writes "I work at FAANG", that usually means Amazon.

Twitter? Really? If you judge by the stuff they put out publicly it’s mostly google and fb. Even linkedin has kafka. What did twitter ever put out? Mesos? (No, thanks)

I wasn't judging by open source. I was judging by:

1) Who is hiring top people in my group of colleagues

2) Who is described by people who work there as having a healthy work environment (i.e. people want to work there)

For Twitter, I'll admit I have a small enough N that I can't speak with very much confidence at all. I have one or two friends there, but they seem very happy, describe their peers as smart, etc. They're competent and I trust them, but well, one or two anecdotes doesn't make data.

But Twitter did put out a few high-profile things like Bootstrap. I don't like or use Bootstrap myself, but it's predominant in that area.

They have a bunch of womb chairs, though.

There are SO MANY at Apple Park! And that's just one piece of $5k designer furniture too. I swear that a not-insignificant cost of Park is just designer furniture. It really is an experience.

For the decently paid people, that may still be true. I'm not so sure for the common retail folks, or the freelancers that Apple used to hire to categorize and correct Siri recordings.

You're going to Disneyland all right, because you're going to be a mascot. Here, put on this Mickey costume and head. If you need to puke (and you will), there's a scupper inside the head. Now get out there and greet the kiddies for eight hours.