What big-tech SDET roles are actually like — my honest 18-month experience

I joined a FAANG-adjacent company as an SDET 18 months ago after 5 years at startups. Honest assessment: **What's better than startups:** - Resources — CI infrastructure, tooling budget, dedicated platform teams - Learning — brilliant colleagues, strong internal culture around testing - Scope — working on systems at real scale is a genuine education **What's worse:** - Ownership — you own a narrow slice; broad impact takes years of relationship building - Bureaucracy — getting a new tool approved took 3 months and 4 review committees - Velocity — I shipped more meaningful test infrastructure in 3 months at a startup than in 18 months here **The SDET role specifically:** At big tech it's often more infra-engineering than test-writing. I spend ~60% of my time on platform work (test frameworks, CI, tooling), ~40% on actual test development. If you want to stay close to product testing, a high-growth startup SDET role keeps you closer to that.