Joining one of the FANGs as your first job is a great way to kill your chances of developing a highly diverse skill set early on. Good luck doing anything interesting when there are 120 superior engineers who are bored out of their minds all vying for the opportunity. Working in a smaller company that has real problems to solve tends to be much more rewarding. There's a reason the technical leadership at the big 4 tends to be comprised of engineers who came from elsewhere.

I have to agree with the OP, I know a few Googlers (my wife used to work there) who transferred from satellite offices (say Venice or NYC) to MTV and all of a sudden their careers took off. Generally, being physically there where the action is (HQ) seems to pay off for ones career.

One time I talked to a Google recruiter, and that was the message he conveyed. "Sure, you can work at a satellite office, but if you are interested in your career, Mountain View is where you want to be."

Two caveats to that:

- I promise you that's only true as far as your project's priority. For example if Google Maps in Colorado is more important to the company, at the moment, than some other project at HQ, then working on that project at HQ is not better for your career.

- Remember a recruiter is a sales person. Some are honest, some will tell you what serves their own interest.

All Google VPs are in MTV, it's not a secret inside Google that it's easier to get promoted there. Still, I'm perfectly happy in working at a satellite office.

Yes, I doubt the MTV recruiter gets commission if they have to hand you off to the satellite office recruiter instead.

> Doesn't make sense. The big 4 have campuses across the country.

Yes, but a disproportionate number of their positions are in the bay area. Also, it's much easier to job hop between high-paying companies in the bay area, and this is particularly true if you have a specialization more specific/less common than "web dev" or "iOS dev".

My first role was in Charlotte - at a startup. It's not everyday that you get to work for a company with fewer that 10 people and less than 10 months old but it happened for me in a market notorious for only having banking mobile dev roles. Ironically, I left the Bay Area to get my first shot because I wasn't young enough for cultural fit most places (apparently). Now, I'm in Chicago and while the weather is shit, there is a lot of energy here and the scene appears to be lifting off. You don't need to build a reputation in SF (or Oakland, et al).

I think that whole ridiculous "cultural fit" nonsense is why I ignore jobs in the BA. What on earth do I care if my team listens to the same music that I do? or wants to eat the same food I do? Culture is best when it's infused with all kinds of outside sources. Having this homogeneous hive-mind isn't really good for any business. But trying to explain that to your average 20-something is typically not that easy.

>Just fixing bugs at big SV company

They're called "incidents" at some (enterprise software) bigcos, BTW :) - and tend to be called "defects" in software services companies using software engineering standards like ISO 9000 or SEI CMM.

Juniors or freshers tend to get assigned those for a while. Nothing wrong per se, it helps them learn the codebase, and in some bigcos, the codebases can be pretty big. The same practice is followed in some smallcos too.