Here's an insight from someone not in Big Tech: it's rare that engineers go "broad" in traditional companies, thus cross-functional teams are hard. However, in Big Tech it's still pretty common (and encouraged!) to work/move across stacks (e.g. do backend changes as a web eng) 
A few things that make this more common at these companies:
- Internal open-source model (anyone can put up PRs)
- Monorepos & 1-step build processes
- Heavy automation & LOTS of automated quality checks ("if the tests pass, you can push it")
- Hiring for generalist engineers
- Internal open-source model (anyone can put up PRs)
- Monorepos & 1-step build processes
- Heavy automation & LOTS of automated quality checks ("if the tests pass, you can push it")
- Hiring for generalist engineers
On the last part - hiring for generalist software engineers - Big Tech gets a lot of flak for the interview process that is... generalist. Rarely going deep into e.g. specific frameworks.
And this is intentional. They want/need people who won't be tied down to one language/tech.
And this is intentional. They want/need people who won't be tied down to one language/tech.
It is wild how striking the difference can be though.
On my team, I had a sr mobile engineer go backend, another change focus to web for a few years, iOS --> Android etc. People were interested, I encouraged, everyone won.
You basically never see this in traditional companies.
On my team, I had a sr mobile engineer go backend, another change focus to web for a few years, iOS --> Android etc. People were interested, I encouraged, everyone won.
You basically never see this in traditional companies.
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