Re:Ask HN: Startup vs. big corp fresh out of college?
by luckydude on Saturday July 18, 2015 @01:07PM
(#9908096)
Unless you have an unusual background, find the best big company you can and try and go there. I'm old so when I was in college it was Bell Labs. By the time I got out it was Sun so I went there. Don't regret it for a minute and I stayed there for about 7 years.
If you are a grad student thinking about a PhD, here's what I remember about that. A hard part (there are many) of a PhD is your thesis. Finding a good topic, while you are in school, is hard. However, go into industry and look around and you'll find topic after topic.
Getting back to startup/big company, I would pick a big company if you can go to an interesting one and do interesting work. Facebook seems like they are doing a lot of pretty interesting systems stuff, languages, tools, etc, along with all the social stuff (that I don't pretend to understand). Google used to be the cool place but some of that has worn off, might still be worth a look but it would really depend on what you are doing.
Oh, one other thought: don't be afraid of paying your dues. When I got to Sun I joined the kernel group and they gave the job nobody else wanted: make the kernel conform to the POSIX spec. Seems like a bunch of shit work but for a relatively fresh programmer it was a fantastic education. If I had turned up my nose at that work I would have lost out.
If you are a grad student thinking about a PhD, here's what I remember about that. A hard part (there are many) of a PhD is your thesis. Finding a good topic, while you are in school, is hard. However, go into industry and look around and you'll find topic after topic.
Getting back to startup/big company, I would pick a big company if you can go to an interesting one and do interesting work. Facebook seems like they are doing a lot of pretty interesting systems stuff, languages, tools, etc, along with all the social stuff (that I don't pretend to understand). Google used to be the cool place but some of that has worn off, might still be worth a look but it would really depend on what you are doing.
Oh, one other thought: don't be afraid of paying your dues. When I got to Sun I joined the kernel group and they gave the job nobody else wanted: make the kernel conform to the POSIX spec. Seems like a bunch of shit work but for a relatively fresh programmer it was a fantastic education. If I had turned up my nose at that work I would have lost out.