Hey all! I need your thoughts. I have been interviewing like crazy these past few months, today I finally got an offer. It’s for Visa as a senior Swe. For context I’ve worked in the defense industry since I’ve graduated college (3.5 years ago). I’ve always used my government security clearance to find jobs and as job security. Question is, should I take the senior swe gig or continue to try and get into FAANG? Do you all think visa is a good company to have on your resume? It seems like the scale and impact of the systems I’ll be working with will be pretty critical being that they do millions of transactions a day. I have an interview for Microsoft tomorrow for their government cloud sector however it’s only as a SWE I. Should I prioritize Microsoft gov? Thanks! Current TC: 130 Visa offer TC: ~160 - 170 ps. I’m super passionate about the type of work I do and working at a commercial company has been a goal of mine for a while now. More often than not defense jobs have poor talent and legacy tech stack.
Visa is a good place. Very chill for most part and very stable as well. The TC jump is decent and Visa benefits and insurance is pretty good. If you get an offer at MSFT you can think about leaving Visa but right now go to Visa for sure. I see lots of people use Visa as a stepping stone to Amazon, Microsoft and co but some stay at Visa for a loooong time. That being said just be wary of demographic distribution of your group. One of my friends used to work in some team of Visa were 95 percent of the group were from one specific country and they all made it hard for outsiders to feel included, lots of politics etc. He eventually left the company because of that.
Let me guess - everyone on that team was from Iceland? 😂
I would ask for leveling interviews at MSFT for SDE2 before deciding (or after deciding and proceed to interview at MSFT anyway). If it's SDE1 at MSFT at this comp you are pushing the point there isn't much value other than maintaining clearance. I'd not want to start there as SDE1 you are basically putting yourself in uphill battle day 1. Visa is bank company so good WLB, good keeping career, and probably same comp as MS at SDE1, less work.
The president of Technology at Visa is ex-Microsoft, just FYI. Rajat Taneja. Your microsoft interview will level you based on the interviews regardless of what level at which the job is posted.
Msft tc will be higher
Visa is legacy as well. If you are right Indian then you will move up fast…
My friend left visa due to things like you mentioned
OP what's your security clearance level? S or TS?
TS with poly. However tired of defense work. Served in the military and just trying to see what else is out there. Do you like lockheed?
Lockheed is alright in my opinion. Pay is not competitive and tech stack is older but I could have done worse in this market. However I'm still a new grad and my clearance level is only S. From what I've seen, you definitely have more exit opportunities esp for FAANG if your clearance is TS.
Take the job. Stay for a year at visa then look again. Leave on good terms w booz (not hard to do). booz loves people coming back if you change your mind OR you keep looking for FAANG in a year. Definitely take the salary bump. Do you ever work on anything at Booz that has much scale? What level are you at BAH now?
Senior consultant when I left (I went to a small defense contractor afterwards for 1.5 years) and from my experience most of booz is on-site staffing, couldn’t find the opportunity to work on large scale systems. Booz is a solid company but it’s so hard to find the good jobs, so many of them are direct support staffing at a gov building.