Already signed an offer, questioning my decision
TLDR: would you pick thoughtspot or Microsoft? Which do you believe will help me develop as an engineer/pay more? Can I get out of an offer I already signed? Long story short, I signed Microsoft in SF because I felt like I could learn a lot working from a smaller office in a big company for the cloud & AI group. I felt like it’s a better financial opportunity. And I felt like I’d learn a lot working for cloud & AI in a company that’s starting to focus a lot more on that. However, now I’m considering ThoughtSpot (a unicorn startup). I believe it’ll be a better financial opportunity and allow me to develop skills across a large technical stack very quickly. Thoughtspot does a lot of cool stuff and working at a startup I think will give me the opportunity to learn a lot about that cool stuff (particularly NLP). And given the company IPOs I’ll be making much more $$$ than Microsoft. What do I do?
Take Microsoft. Thoughtspot is shit.
I’m leaning towards Microsoft, but what makes you say thoughtspot is shit?
Worked at a competitor in the past. The entire space is kinda shitty.
Microsoft. It isn't what it used to be. They will lead the cloud market in a few years, you'd want to be there.
Get the big company experience, to run at scale, then GTFO.
Why would you take thoughtspot over Microsoft, lmao this isn’t even a real debate. Now if you were talking about Airbnb over Microsoft that would be an actual decision.
Even if the company IPOs it's still not likely you'll make more than at MSFT, not with the way MSFT stock has been performing lately. And an IPO could be a long way off, if it ever comes. Financially, startups rarely make sense. Don't do it for money.
Bird in Hand. Also, put TL;DR at the top, not at the bottom. It’s already too late by then.
Thanks for the heads up!
To be clear, THIS is reneging an offer!
No it’s not I’m just asking about the possibilities given my current state. After everyone’s input however I have no plans on not working at Microsoft. Just wanted to see what my options were if I had any
I meant IF you do NOT go with MSFT!
Never heard of ThoughtSpot, but somehow the name doesn't give the best impression (a bit tacky maybe, probably lot of BS) :P I know how unreasonable I sound.
Turns out Ajeet Singh, a cofounder of nutanix is also a cofounder of thoughtspot. Do you have any thoughts on him as a co founder?
Oh now I see why I felt that way. It sounded very 90s name and kind of explains now why. I have heard of this company. One of Nutanix executive left to be it's CEO. Anyway, I joined long after he left and left Nutanix a while ago. And during my time, I never heard much about Ajeet or ThoughtSpot from my colleagues. Mostly, heard about Cohesity and Mohit, probably because ThoughtSpot is quite different business, and Mohit had written like huge amount of codebase which was beautiful and awesome. Anyway, I'm not much of a believer in either Nutanix, ThoughtSpot or Cohesity. Not that they don't have smart people or anything. Sure they will make money and be successful, it's just the product I don't feel strongly about. I don't like enterprise software. You probably shouldnt take my advice, if any of this was an advice.
I was in a similar situation with a startup about 2 years ago and don’t regret my decision to go to Microsoft one bit. In my ive made more at Microsoft and the entire difference in comp came from stocks. Most startups won’t give more stock than Microsoft even if you can eventually sell it, but your situation might be different. One of the big differences between Microsoft and many startups is career growth. Will you be getting consistent raises, bonuses, and promotions on a yearly cycle? At Microsoft yes, at some startups no. And that’s an important part of compensation. On the other hand big companies like Microsoft will still be around in 2, 5, 10 years if you do choose the startup. So if the work is more interesting and the comp is better it could be a good choice.
Signing an offer isn’t a contract just decline if you want to go elsewhere. Might be a good idea to get another offer before dropping the first one though. We can’t tell you which option is better for your life goals.
Do you know how it is to work part of the cloud & AI group for SF office in terms of working on interesting material that will help me develop marketable skills and learn as much as I can
I’d pick the MS job because thoughtspot seems like just another reporting company and MS has tons of opportunity and movement if needed. A lot of these ML jobs are just being on a data team creating reports. Not all these companies are fully employing ML in the innovative ways that they imply.