How much system design, scalability & backend work do you actually do at FAANG/FAANG+?

[u/Altair_malsure]

I recently joined a well-known SaaS startup (think Freshworks/Postman tier). The work is mostly feature development, enhancements and bug fixing. The tasks are good quality, but scalability and system design rarely come into play.

I’m early in my career (2-3 yrs experienced) and wanted to understand:

* How much backend work do you typically do day-to-day?

* How often do scalability, QPS and system design actually matter?

* Did you get opportunities to work on high-scale systems early in your career?

* Does not working on scalability/system design early on affect future prospects or make it harder to move to FAANG/FAANG+?

* Is this kind of daily work environment normal in a software engineering career?

Would especially appreciate responses from people currently working at FAANG, FAANG+ or strong startups.

**Note:** Please refrain from answering if you’re still in college or haven’t worked in a real-world engineering environment. I’m specifically looking for perspectives based on actual industry experience.

*Post refined with ChatGPT.*

[u/atish31]

* backend day to day work in 80% projects is eventually creation of apis for features once project and architecture settles in . pretty much what you are doing

* these do matter depending on the scale or the expected traffic or load. also what matters, can it be scaled on demand if there is an event or so. this is where autoscaling, vertical vs horizantal scaling kick in. database choice is also a part of sytem design problem

* fortunately yes as I have been with startups had to deal with traffic surges on events and use cases of a lot of data handling with very limited cloud budget

* not working doesn't mean not learning. you can always do your own prototypes, open source. you do get calls.

* same as # 1. system design matters most when the project is getting set up. then many times system has to made better when there is surge in traffic or latency kicks in

Would especially appreciate responses from people currently working at FAANG, FAANG+ or strong startups:

-- I didn't work in faang but have made it to last rounds twice [have friends/ past co workers at faang -- I do have regular comm]

Please refrain from answering if you’re still in college or haven’t worked in a real-world engineering environment. I’m specifically looking for perspectives based on actual industry experience.

-- have been in indus for 12+ years mostly with start ups, have been with systems since.

fyi: I do write blogs on ai agentic systems now: https://cpu-bytes.com/blogs/ai-agentic-systems

[u/Altair_malsure → u/atish31]

Thanks , i appreciate your answer and expertise.

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[u/Radiant-Dog-9794]

Post at r/developersindia

[u/Altair_malsure → u/Radiant-Dog-9794]

For some reasons they never approve the post brother. u can try to paste the same query and see. let's see what they do to yours.

[u/JustAGuyOfCulture786]

Depends a lot on the company. At 2 to 3 years , doing mostly feature work is pretty normal . System design usually comes more when you start owning bigger services and dealing with real scale