Latest / The Tech Career Podcast with Fexingo: Engineering Jobs, Interviews, and FAANG Career Strategy / What FAANG Engineers Read on Their First Day
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, when you started at Amazon, did anyone hand you a book on your first day? Luna: You mean besides the stack of legal documents? No, but a senior engineer did slide a copy of 'The Pragmatic Programmer' onto my desk by the end of week one. Lucas: Exactly. That's the thing — first-day reading lists at FAANG are almost a rite of passage. A survey I saw from early 2025 polled 200 new-grad hires across Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, and Apple. 78 percent said they received a recommended reading list within their first week. Luna: That's a surprisingly high number. I thought it was more of an informal thing — someone just handing you a book. Lucas: It is informal in the sense that there's rarely a mandatory syllabus. But the lists circulate. At Google, the internal wiki has a page called 'Books Every New Engineer Should Read' — it's been there since at least 2018. Top of the list: 'The Mythical Man-Month' by Fred Brooks. Luna: That makes sense — Brooks's law, the whole 'adding manpower to a late project makes it later' concept. Google's culture is all about avoiding that with their small, autonomous teams. Lucas: Right. And then you look at Meta's list. Different philosophy. They push 'Staff Engineer' by Will Larson — a book about navigating the senior-plus career track. Meta's angle is: we want you thinking about your next promotion before you've even shipped your first diff. Luna: I've also heard that Netflix gives new engineers a copy of their own culture deck — the one that became the 'No Rules Rules' book. It's less about technical chops and more about 'high performance, freedom and responsibility'. Lucas: Exactly. Each company's pick reveals what they value. Amazon? They hand out 'The Goal' by Eliyahu Goldratt — it's a business novel about constraints and throughput. Amazon's whole fulfillment empire runs on that thinking. Apple doesn't have a standard list, but new hires often get recommended 'The Design of Everyday Things'. Luna: So it's not just a nice gesture. It's a signal. Here's what we care about, here's the vocabulary you need to speak, here's the mental model that will make you effective. Lucas: And it's practical. The survey also asked 'did you read the recommended book?' Only 34 percent said yes within the first month. But those who did reported feeling 40 percent more confident in team discussions about architecture or process. The books give you shared vocabulary. Luna: I remember that. When I finally read 'The Pragmatic Programmer', I started noticing phrases like 'don't repeat yourself' and 'orthogonality' in code reviews. It was like I'd been given a decoder ring. Lucas: Yeah, and that's the point. The books aren't always teaching new technical skills — they're teaching the local dialect. At Amazon, if you don't know what a 'flywheel' is or how to apply the 'two-pizza team' concept, you're going to miss half the conversation in planning meetings. Luna: That's a good point. And I wonder — has any company ever tried to make the reading mandatory? I remember hearing about a VP at Microsoft who required everyone on his team to read 'The Phoenix Project' within 30 days. Lucas: That's a rare case, and it backfired a bit — some engineers resented it. The unwritten rule at most FAANGs is: recommend, don't require. The survey found that 92 percent of lists came with language like 'if you have time' or 'here's what I found useful'. Luna: Which is smart. Because if you mandate a book, you're also mandating a worldview. And engineering culture at these companies prides itself on intellectual independence. Lucas: So here's the practical takeaway for someone preparing to join a FAANG: find the book. Before your start date, look up the unofficial reading list for your new company. Read it — even skim it — and you'll start day one already speaking the language. Honestly, if today's episode was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: That's a good ritual. I know a few people who've done that and said it cut their ramp-up time by weeks. Lucas: And if you're already inside one of these companies but haven't read the book yet — it's never too late. Pull up the wiki page, grab a copy, and see if your team's conversations suddenly click into place. Luna: I think I'm going to re-read 'The Mythical Man-Month' this weekend. It's been years, and I'm curious how it reads now that I've been in the industry a while. Lucas: That's a great idea. Let me know what stands out the second time. Next episode, I want to talk about something that came up in that survey: the role of 'engineering blogs' versus books. Turns out, a lot of new hires are skipping the books entirely and reading internal blog posts instead.