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Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

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Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#41

Post by MoBattah »

tranchms wrote: post #37

Work at the biggest and best company you can, with the best position you can get hired for. There is invaluable brand capital, and the network is priceless. It’s the same rationale between choosing colleges. I attended a top 14 university. I have instant respect and credibility. I currently work for a massive global technology company. I have instant respect and credibility. Do I ask for it? No. Is it warranted more…

I'm 21. Started at Amazon, Apple, Northrop, then the largest private software firm and have wanted nothing but to exit the corporate world for a remote job at a start up.

Getting closer by choosing a smaller employer that's remote flexible.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#42

Post by 013a »

I vastly prefer smaller companies due to the outsized impact each employee can have on the success of the entire organization, and the ability to wear different hats.

Barring that, I prefer a Google/Microsoft/etc big 5 company.

I don't personally feel like there's a lot of draw to a low level position at mid-sized companies, and I've worked at a few. You're going to sacrifice the personal agency you get as soon as you go above, say, 10-15 engineers. So if you're going to do that, you might as well go all the way and get the massive paychecks, benefits, valuable stock, fringe benefits, and the in-place infrastructure.

If I were looking for positions higher up the chain (CTO, Director, etc), then mid sized companies start to look more interesting because you have the opportunity to have that impact with a big team and product that's already in place.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#43

Post by soham »

lmeyerov wrote: post #11

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 too have realized that they need to compete with the BigCos and hence have started to offer similar comps/perks. More and more of the VC funded fast-growing companies are offering packages competing with BigCos.

2. Hence, for a software engineer, the main reason to join/not-join a company today is less about pay. It's more about the type of work you will get to do, and the people that you want to work with.

3. There is something to be said about having a brand, but given how tech is percolating everything we do, it is also getting very differentiated. There are hence brands in every "flavor" of tech. e.g. if you want to work on self-driving cars, Waymo is a great brand. But if you want to work on healthcare tech, there are others.

I train software engineers to do better at challenging interviews and I do that for a living. The way I see it, the landscape has been shifting in this direction for at least past 5 years, if not more. At least in the large tech hubs of the US.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#44

Post by [deleted] »

skybrian wrote: post #38
tranchms wrote: post #37

Work at the biggest and best company you can, with the best position you can get hired for. There is invaluable brand capital, and the network is priceless. It’s the same rationale between choosing colleges. I attended a top 14 university. I have instant respect and credibility. I currently work for a massive global technology company. I have instant respect and credibility. Do I ask for it? No. Is it warranted more…

Are you a programmer? This isn't how any of the programmers I know judge things. (The college part, anyway.)

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#45

Post by 6ak74rfy »

lmeyerov wrote: post #11

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…

I concur with your sentiments here. For instance, there are so many things brewing inside Amazon that I know I'll always have a new area to explore whenever I want. For e.g., the world is talking about building serverless architectures, but I can actually work on the platform that will power that move. I can work in any of the cloud databases, build workflows or the platforms that power other to do so, build low latency services etc.

So, I can easily get breadth. I can also get depth if I want - embedded systems, etc.

In short, there are opportunities. It's up to you how you utilize them.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#46

Post by lsc »

orky56 wrote: post #3

Google provides immediate brand recognition that shows future employers that you've achieved a certain level success and/or are capable enough to get in. In addition, Google pays very well and offers equity that has a tangible value since they are already public, highly stable, and still have some growth in their future. Having Google early in your career allows you to then seek future opportunities having some money…

The other thing I want to point out here which I wish I understood in my early 20s is that cash you invest when you are young grows. long-term long-bets of the type your mom would recommend (whole market index funds, real-estate, etc...) really require time to work, so socking money away when you are young makes a big difference.

I've got friends who earn about what I do who are about my age who, many years, earn as much at this point from income on their capital as they do from their regular job. I would be in that position too, if I had spent my money working for a big company and socking cash away, rather than spending my '20s running a business.

I'd make more money working for other people, too. Having a company with a good brand on your resume means a hell of a lot more than running a lifestyle company, even if that company succeeded as a lifestyle company.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#47

Post by skybrian »

anoncon wrote: post #12

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.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#48

Post by kllvql »

ScotterC wrote: post #15

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 may be specific to my employer, but I've been able to find ways to demonstrate my (on the job learned) knowledge in a field and get a job I find interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

#50

Post by iancmceachern »

That early in your career I would go with where you would learn the most. That usually means whichever has the most challenging, complex, "buck rodgers" and most importantly interesting to you project(s). For me it was blood pumps and artificial hearts.
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