Is doing product software development work at a less known company worth turning down a well known company (Amazon/MS) working on internal tools? Basically is getting the name brand on my resume worth working on irrelevant internal tools?
You could also work at a decent name company in high impact projects like me 😉
What kind of internal tools are we talking about? "Irrelevant" can be worth millions at Amazon scale; there's a reason we have so many infra teams. Wanting to work on a core consumer facing project is a rookie mistake (one that I once made). 90% of the time it's just CRUD bullshit, bug fixes, ops fires, process, and endless meetings with schizophrenic PMs. If you're really unlucky, you'll also have bad WLB in the face of external pressure. Especially if you're the low man on the pole--which, as a college hire, you are. Small company might change that dynamic somewhat, but still.
I’ve worked on 2 core consumer facing products at google. 1 as a lead. While it’s awesome reading press about your features and knowing that when you launch a feature it will be seen by hundreds of millions of users each day... It sucks dealing with the extremely burdensome launch process and reviews at the same time as trying to appease a product design team that can’t make up their mind. Furthermore, because the product is so visible, you get launch date and estimation questions from upper management all the time. So you overwork yourself trying to please them, and while no one is explicitly asking you do it, you sacrifice WLB for high visibility projects... You get high performance reviews and calibration scores, but don’t get promoted. Even though you have great impact and leadership, it’s hard to prove difficulty of “90% CRUD bs, bug fixes, ops fires, process, and endless meetings with PMs”. So the promotion committee (many members of whom work on completely different products) says “look, it’s cool you have performed so well at L4 for the past 2 years, but we just don’t think your project is that difficult”.
Oh wow that’s super interesting. Would your answer change if I’m stuck using SQL at the big company but will use Java and do more real development at the other one?
I’m not you, so it’s hard for me to say what thing you will enjoy/endure better. I will echo what others have said here though. Getting a big brand name on your resume is really valuable for future moves. As an engineer at Google with over 5 years of experience, I can reach out to any recruiter at any company and get an interview. I’ve never been denied an interview by any company I’ve reached out to.
Get the big name brands early. They’ll carry you for the rest of your career and will expose you to maturity and how a successful business runs. Then go do a startup.
This. Geting big brand names will teach you good practices and open up a lot of doors. It acts as invaluable experience when you later apply for smaller companies. The inverse won't be true.
Don’t work on internal tools. The SETI role at google is not the same as SWE.
Internal tools =/= SETI, SETI is shit though
One of my friend worked as an Analyst at Deloitte with an outdated technology,edited his resume as per masters and the interview calls he gets are mind blowing. Although Deloitte pays peanuts though
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My answer would change if it's Facebook or Google internal tools.
Why?