Ask HN: Which job should I choose?

> what would be better for my career and what branch do you think has a better future?

Based on your limited description, I think both would be fine your career, and both branches will do well enough in the near future.

Questions to ask yourself:

* how much freedom do the companies offer you? How many of your own ideas can you bring in?

* are the good programmers how can mentor you at each company?

* how much does the choice of tooling affect you? That what you'll work with all the time. How fast is it going to change?

* how much does the business branch actually affect your work? If you're doing frontend development for an infosec company, you're not doing intrusion detection or the like; if you do frontend development for an airline, you won't do flight or luggage routing. My point is that it's not a given that the branch will actually influence your work very much. (It might still be, though).

* How many people will use the software you write? How much does that matter to you?

* Are there any ethical differences? Do you support the companies' values and methods?

Based on your comments, the airline company seems like it would have the best opportunity for personal growth. If it's early in your career, I'd go for that one as it gives you experience working with front-end, back-end and mobile.

Edit: there's also the fact that with the security company you're starting off making charts and maybe moving into more dev, but there's also the chance you could get stuck making charts

I You feel good at these all technologies/frameworks and the salary and location are pretty similiar in both of these companies (or You just don't care at the moment about it) I would suggest You to take the 1. offer.

Why?

I'm a webdev and I love building websites. This company build apps using hyped (at the moment) technologies so if something go wrong then You'll find new job easily (I'm getting job offers which requires angular/backbone/cordova experience all the time)

On the other hand, IT security is trending niche, which can be more stable than web development (where market is really huge and dynamic).

But hey, in the end, it's up to You and You should choose wisely what suits You best.

As people write, you have to decide on your own, but I can share what would I do. First, consider technologigies. Do I like any of thechnologies more than those in second oportunity (I assume there aren't technologies you dislike). This is not very important though. Second, think about what company do. I'd prefer security much more and this is very big plus. What would you do: design or maintenance (I think we all like first more ;)). But still it is important how the work is arranged in the company. Using scrum or chaos, what tools are used? It's maybe 0,5 as important as second. Startups win over corpo, that's the rule for me. People, I would choose nice, energetic team over dull corpo crowd. In fact, I already know I wouldn't choose second anyway. :) If still in doubt I would refuse to both and look for something better. I don't know if you can afford, but I have better things to do than work in medicore environment. ;) I hope this can help you a little bit, good luck!

(2) seems like obviously the right answer for you. unless you really really love security (you crazy paranoid fucker), (1) will have extra crazy politics and higher probability of getting stuck somewhere you didn't expect / don't want to be. if the stock comp is really good and doesn't come with weird strings attached then maybe (1) could be competitive. career options after experience on "multi-tenant cloud infra" are pretty good though.