What would you recommend instead?

Work at a company making a product you believe in and with coworkers that you get along with.

I can not emphasize enough getting along your coworkers and they with you. If you do not it will be even more challenging to get anything done.

I'm loving (semi-) government. Great work/life balance and at least in the Netherlands pretty innovative and into open-source.

What linked current Big Tech was early entrants into adtech and the related money-printing machine.

Now they are just large advertising platforms that do something to attract users and user data.

I think under similar logic, if you want to work for those companies for comp/prof development, it’s probably whatever next money printer is building out.

IMO this is probably AI, next-gen adtech that keeps the technology going post-GDPR etc (platform plays like FAANG or great user enumeration companies in the open ecosystem, although a lack of a non-obvious adtech product might limit the growth and prestigious of these types) maybe some top cybersecurity vendors if the problems get worse and regulations get serious, maybe defense tech (second gen ones following what Palantir did).

> What would you recommend instead?

My personal preference and risk appetite takes me to successful small public companies or well-funded startups.

If I don't have a risk appetite, I'd go government or boring F500 companies that are starving for engineers.

Wherever I go, I am very particular about the mission and that I get along with the team and manager. The less the bureaucracy, the more likely I am to enjoy working for them.

But there is no way I will work for big tech with their miserable processes, culture and exploitative management. I am here to work, not to constantly walk on eggshells for BS rules.

I actually would echo this at the skills level. A lot of the bigger companies kind of pigeonhole your skillset to one tech stack that is very company-specific and introducing new tech can be very difficult. At least that was my experience in my last three big corporate positions (now at a series C startup).

I’ve said the best thing that happen to my career and finances was to work at AWS for three years. The best thing that ever happened to my mental health was to get PIP’d from Amazon with a $40K severance, Amazon on my resume and finding a job three weeks later.