I want to put things into perspective here. I'm a new grad coming out of school and going to Amazon for my first ever real job. Lots of flack and hate gets thrown around blind about various random things at these companies. But really, how prestigious is it to be working for them? If you look at the big picture, how much of the industry is even represented by people who work for the big4? Aren't we a very specific group of the best engineers making $$$? And do we tend to take this for granted sometimes?
Prestige only means anything to someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. Where you work doesn't really matter -- it's what you do and what you achieve that matters. My advice is to not expect any extra kudos from working at Amazon. Honestly, it's not a big achievement getting hired at any of these companies anymore. Find ways to differentiate yourself if you want prestige.
This guy is full of shit. Get prestige and win at life.
You know what's more important than big4 prestige? Putting in good work. Coworkers will get new gigs here and there and suddenly some of them will see your good work and open doors and opportunities because they will fight to have you on their team at whatever place they move too. In a few years of good work you'll have open doors everywhere.
This is the correct reply. The converse is also true if you screw up doors could potentially be closed
Too many people in blind are obsessed with prestige of big4. Dont forget there are tens of thousands of swe in these companies - so they cant be that selective. There are places that select based on contribution to CS(open source, strong publications and research etc). But people working there dont care that their company is unkown, only performance and the reward that follows with it matters.
Is Tech Privilege a thing?
Let me tell you a hypothetical, totally unrealistic scenario. First year at your job, you will be given relatively small/easy assignment. Manager, coworker will try to make you believe your project is an important, challenging and it will make great impact to the company. After few months, you will finish the project and your manager will tell you are great (even if your product is mediocre). You will be so excited and feel like anything in this world will be possible. After 1-2 years, you are going to work on real projects that is tied to finance. (Your work needs to make $$) From here on, no one will hold your hand, tell you how great you are. At this stage, make sure and be prepared to document every request someone else make you do. Especially if the request will have downstream impact. If they go back on their words and you don’t have any documents to prove they are wrong, you will be the one to blame. Speaking of which, you might get finger pointed or worse, go through disciplinary action when you make any kind of error. You will also see your some coworkers being fired. This will intimidate you. You will also see coworkers way smarter. This will be discouraging. At some point, you will hate your job and start looking for new company. You will realize what company you work for doesn’t matter at all. What matters is people you work with. And for reference, Amazon had the second highest turnover among Fortune 500. Thats 2 out of 500. Don’t let that yellow smile fool you.
Is it this bad at Boeing?
Forget prestige - I am at Microsoft because I am challenged by my team and excitement in the area that we are working in - any startup can give you that - don’t run behind prestige or money - run behind what teaches you more , what breaks you more - because you will not do that when you are old. If you sit on prestige - very soon you will not be employable :) don’t worry about what others think - worry about what you think without being biased - situations are different for everyone.
You earn prestige by writing code with y combinator :)
YC is overrated. Too many startups are in the batches now. When PG ran things, perhaps it was different but right now several companies fail just 1-2 years after demo day. Great learning experience and network though!
What are the "Big 4" here ? Are you ranking them by Market Cap ? Market cap is not directly correlated to "prestige-to-work-for". I don't want to be a douche and break the reality to you, but hopefully you understand it yourself.
No downside having a b4 on your resume early. You can always leave. Longer term it's how you value the work you are doing and more importantly, the people you work with. Good colleagues are like family while bad colleagues can make you miserable.
You work for one of the top 10 tech companies in the country. Take the job and watch as doors just magically open for you based off being a developer at Amazon.