Few people write blog posts to say "I worked at Foo Corp and it was okay." There's a strong bias toward horror stories. There's also a HN selection bias: a story about FAANG is a lot more likely to be upvoted than a story about some small startup.
I have friends in all the big tech companies and I don't think any of them is fundamentally better. They all have their idiosyncrasies, they all have good teams and terrible ones, they all have a ton of red tape.
I think the main problem is that they built their reputation by claiming they invented a new way of doing business and a new way of treating their employees. They were supposed to be the antidote to the corporate culture at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, and whatnot. But ultimately, they converged on pretty much the same.
I have friends in all the big tech companies and I don't think any of them is fundamentally better. They all have their idiosyncrasies, they all have good teams and terrible ones, they all have a ton of red tape.
I think the main problem is that they built their reputation by claiming they invented a new way of doing business and a new way of treating their employees. They were supposed to be the antidote to the corporate culture at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, and whatnot. But ultimately, they converged on pretty much the same.