Google T4 vs Uber SWE II
Which one offers the biggest growth opportunity? Pay is the same Google team is a bit boring compared to the Uber team. My concerns: 1. I wont have time to learn at Uber since its a very fast paced environment, I'll only be able to practice what I know like how it is @ Facebook 2. I want WLB so I'm leaning towards Google, but Uber has a lot of cool stuff in their engineering blog, if I join, I'll have access to their internal docs and resources which I can learn from TC: no numbers to share to protect my anonymity until I sign an offer, Ill share the numbers afterwards. However, I can say that the negotiation numbers published in blind are mostly accurate.
Uber is also starting to have a big company culture now and is less startup-y, so you won't be pressured to start quickly or even face not having time to learn or anything like that. If you work in most teams (non-infra) you'll be using dev tools / platforms already built in place since ages just like but not quite to the extent it is at Google. I would say go for the more interesting team in either company. Only thing I have noticed while job hunting recruiters/hiring managers always still seem to get wet at the prospect of hiring an ex-Googler, so Google might be a slightly better brand for future job hunting, but not a huuuge plus.
Thanks for sharing! Do you think my 2nd concern is valid? Is there an abundance of internal resources about engineering and distributed systems to learn from? Or is it mostly tribal knowledge?
All the internal tools, platforms and Uber related engineering best practices are well documented, but if you're talking about general, deep tutorials/reading on a subject like ML/data engineering/distributed systems etc, here you wont find it here.
As a hiring engineering director - Google is more likely to provide more opportunities for your next company. Uber is a fancy taxi company and has a lot of street level ethical issues. At least Google's controversy is debatable - Uber is more mafia.
What do you mean by opportunities? To me, it sounds like I'll be able to pass resume screens slightly better in the future if I go with Google. I don't see a lot of value in that. I'm not sure what other opportunities would it provide.
Every start-up in existence wants to be able to write “ex-Googlers” on their landing page.
(Former Google, Current Uber) The question is where you are in your career. Google is a great place early in your career. You will learn a lot of great practices working with one of the best development environments and smartest people in the world. From a work life balance, Google is a county club. The downside of Google is that at 85k employees and many senior people, everyone is fighting for scraps or you are working on refactoring or improving an existing product. Uber is great for mid-career. There are plenty of opportunities for growth. We are a hyper growth startup that is starting to mature company. What that means is transitioning from building products for growth to building systems for growth. As an experienced engineer, you will be able to apply and have immediate impact. It’s not unheard of for someone 6 month to a year in to own a major system. The downside of Uber is that if you are junior or inexperienced, it may be easy to get lost at Uber. The development environment is improving and systems are maturing. From a career perspective, it’s a toss up. With Google, you can rest on the google brand for your next career. For Uber, you will be able to grow much quicker. It’s hard to make director at Google. In general, my career framework is you have growing years and reaping years. During your growing years, you want to go to a place where you can learn the most. During your reaping years, you want to be at a place that you can advance the most. There’s no wrong answers here. I think all people should go through Google at least once in their career; you won’t be able to get on the ground learning as much as Google. The only red flag in your question is team. Whether it’s Uber or Google, picking the right team is very important. If you get stuck on a bad team at Google, you won’t enjoy it and you won’t grow (who wants to go to Google to work on internal HR software!?!)
Thank you for taking the time to write this detailed reply! I have 2,5 years of experience. I'd consider myself a junior with a ton of things to learn. That's why I wanted to learn what you meant by 'it may be easy to get lost at Uber as a junior'. Do you mean productivity-wise or in terms of not having enough impact due to the small amount of experience? I don't want to be in a position where there are a lot of impactful problems to solve, not much mentorship/guidance/resources/knowledge to tackle those problems. From your reply, it looks like Google is the better opportunity for me to learn and gain experience.
2.5 years is enough to avoid getting lost at Uber. I second the point that team matters.
Google and Uber hire tons of people. You are not going to lose your anonymity from sharing the offers.
Where are you deciding to join?
TC?
Updated the post
Time to update the post with numbers? :)