71–80 of 83 posts
Between the the two groups of companies you list, I'd take Google in a heartbeat. The thing that nobody here is saying is this: at Google, you are in a whole new system where internal moves are relatively easy. The first few years you'll probably have to get tenure (L5), but once you have that, it is very easy to make internal moves. Want to work on search? Start looking at those job boards. Want to do research? Goog…
I'd go to a consulting company that builds custom software for customers. In this way I'll see many different projects in different industries. But don't go to a company that sends you to work on site for a customer and bury you there. Stay in the main office. After some years of that, consider switching sides and find a company that builds its own products, whatever they are.
One thing to consider is that the quality of the individual projects might well be much lower than working at a company that builds their own niche products.
* Higher total compensation (after negotiating!) - though salary + bonus were competitive the additional equity really pushed the offer up and it's less ephemeral than younger companies
* 50% 401k matching basically adds +$9k to the offer and fits right into my financial goals
* Promotion potential; growing into a senior role is (mostly) defined and commensurately compensated
There are also a few other financial perks that Google enables me to take advantage of that further sweetened the deal and were aligned with my financial goals. There were many trade-offs made, but this overall aligned best with my long-term goals.
Counterintuitive to assumptions being made here... you can easily be more of a cog at a 50-5000 employee company than a 5,000+ person company. The medium companies generally have a single true line of business and are focused on tuning & turning that crank, turning $3M/yr to $10-100M/yr. Doing something else makes you a trouble maker, and budgets are watched. The bigger companies will have $100M-100B/yr revenue, so t…
> > and take moonshots to enter new markets big enough to make a dent If you're talking about FAANG, which I assume you are, that's possibly true. But they aren't the only "big companies". There are tons of big cos which do not do any R&D (Cisco, Oracle and the like) and instead acquire startups to grow. And here's the kicker, they don't care for employee development; so choose wisely.
In general, because most technical startups are a wreck and otherwise have technical impedance mismatch with the acquirer, acquisitions likely have integration + technical expansion periods for the first few years before thy succeed/die.
Agreed with others: Opportunities are there, more about whether individuals go for them. And if you mean it doesn't just magically happen, yep. AFAICT, even at Google/FB/etc., PMs have to fight for who they get, and they probably fight for a lot of the same people, and the rest no one really knows...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > and take moonshots to enter new markets big enough to make a dent If you're talking about FAANG, which I assume you are, that's possibly true. But they aren't the only "big companies". There are tons of big cos which do not do any R&D (Cisco, Oracle and the like) and instead acquire startups to grow. And here's the kicker, they don't care for employee development; so choose wisely.
RE:R&D, that's... not true. At the mega-scale, Cisco will fund regular moonshots that they'll "acquire" for ~$0.5B upon success. In general, because most technical startups are a wreck and otherwise have technical impedance mismatch with the acquirer, acquisitions likely have integration + technical expansion periods for the first few years before thy succeed/die. Agreed with others: Opportunities are there, more abo…
Yes they are external entities, not part of Cisco. Cisco I believe calls them "spin-ins". They aren't Cisco employees though.
I will share the suggestion shared by "Jack ma", the founder of alibaba group. He said, To become an entrepreneur "One should work for small companies, generally in big companies, you are part of the big machine, but in small companies, you do most of the work your self and learn it". So, it depends on what you want to be, if you plan to put your self in stable career without much of risk involved - go ahead with big…
> If you want to be part of next future companies, where you can learn much more about the process of how company works and other information, start with smaller high growth company. I think this is only true when the startup is really small, say, 5-20 people. I was once part of a startup that had ~100 developers and I hardly learned about its inner workings, was rarely part of any decision-making on business or cust…
But, a fresh exec or management track engineer? You could make a difference and climb the ladder.
It depends on where you are. Different folks need different opportunities.
Counterintuitive to assumptions being made here... you can easily be more of a cog at a 50-5000 employee company than a 5,000+ person company. The medium companies generally have a single true line of business and are focused on tuning & turning that crank, turning $3M/yr to $10-100M/yr. Doing something else makes you a trouble maker, and budgets are watched. The bigger companies will have $100M-100B/yr revenue, so t…
Very much this. A couple of more points to add: 1. There was a time when the pay distinction between working for big companies and small/mid was clear and present. But these days, the line is blurring. BigCos have realized that startups are eating their lunch and hence they are investing heavily in new ideas and doing better engineering on the old ones to develop those markets even further, faster. Smaller companies…
I would say that if a software engineer is optimizing for income maximization they should almost certainly join one of FAANG, unless they have a formidable appetite for risk and uncertainty. Consider some of the data compiled here: https://www.levels.fyi.
For me this question comes down to: What do you want to learn? In a big company, most risk has been removed from the equation. This is great for compensation and stability but also limits ones possible learnings as well. You might find your time learning the big company’s systems which don’t apply universally because they’re specific to that company’s needs. In smaller companies, risk is still a real aspect of life.…
I somewhat disagree with the idea that a Big Corp reduces your learning opportunity. I work for one of the big companies, and one benefit I don't see highlighted frequently is changing specialties. I have worked in 4 different job families over 6 years. If you do work for a Big Corp and you're an effective employee, you can pretty easily work on jobs at the border between the job you have and the job you want. This m…
One aspect that I’d like to put words to is something orthogonal to the opportunities, which is the distance of the opportunity from the customer and a ‘real’ problem. This isn’t always true in big companies but at most you’d feel like a cog in the machine no?
Between the the two groups of companies you list, I'd take Google in a heartbeat. The thing that nobody here is saying is this: at Google, you are in a whole new system where internal moves are relatively easy. The first few years you'll probably have to get tenure (L5), but once you have that, it is very easy to make internal moves. Want to work on search? Start looking at those job boards. Want to do research? Goog…
This seems a bit optimistic. Transfers do often happen inside Google, but the laws of supply and demand haven't been repealed. Teams in hot areas with limited headcount get to be choosy, and those positions will be harder to get.