Microsoft vs. Atlassian
Microsoft - Core Services Engineering (Redmond) Atlassian - Platform Services team (Mountain View) MSFT comp is slightly higher considering COL and a few other things. This will be my first job out of college beside internships. I prefer to be in the bay - [If you want an A+ career in technology, move to the Bay Area. — Gayle Laakmann McDowell](http://www.gayle.com/blog/2015/11/if-you-want-an-a-career-in-technology-move-to-the-bay-area) but wouldn’t mind the greater Seattle area either. The most important thing for me is career growth. In terms of prestige, MSFT will be a strong name on my resume to helps open doors in the future. But I feel like I will learn more at Atlassian, just because is smaller and I will have more responsibilities. Lastly, what’s the minimum amount of time should I stay in my first job before switching without looking like a job-hopper. Thanks.
I’m not sure Microsoft had the prestige it once did. At any rate, Microsoft might be good if you want to learn about the Microsoft stack, Azure, C#, etc. But to be honest, the stuff you’ll learn elsewhere will likely be more applicable outside Microsoft if you’re not planning on staying forever.
I can't imagine working on jira and not wanting to kill myself
Truth
I've heard culture at Atlassian is amazing
Not in the Mountain View office, unfortunately. That office is completely composed of Groupon people since we hired their CTO and he wanted his own office away from the others. It's weird.
Why the hate for Groupon people? Some of the long term Atlassian engineers who have moved to MTV from Sydney are quite snobby.
Core Services Engineering (CSE) = Microsoft internal IT. Much less respected than the engineering teams that work on the products and core technologies. Crappy leadership too from what I have heard. You'll be working on things like the login 2fa app, email distribution list sign up, corporate vpn that only works %50 of the time... Im sure there are some good teams in CSE, but overall I think you should pick the platforms team if you have a choice. Stay in your first job no less than 2 years imo.
OK so you’re saying is not worth to take Microsoft over Atlassian just to have the brand/stamp on my resume? And that I will learn more with Atlassian platform team.
Def agree! Very hard to get out of CSE into a product group. :(
Agree on CSE. It is generally lower skilled folks that aren't able to get into Product teams. Agree with precious comment on leadership. Until the other poster said Atlassian in Bay Area is not the same as the Austin one re: culture, I woulda recommended Atlassian. One thing to note on MS...u can probably move to a product group after a year or.so in CSE...if u r good enough🙄. If u were choosing between MS and Atlassian in Austin, hands down Atlassian.
MS has shit divisions, but if you are in Azure or AI&R or MSR, life is amazing. Underwater data centers to constantly new features used by real customers. There is a reason MSFT stock is skyrocketing.
Except this is CSE and not Azure.
No state tax in Washington too plus lower cost of living in general. 100k salary here is like at least $130k in bay area.
If u don't mind, could u please share the Tc offered by Atlassian and the level, since I recently interviewed with them and would like to know about the tc
If can change from CSE (which I believe is MSIT) to another division specially, Azure, Bing/AI+R, Xbox etc then hands down Microsoft. I had some interesting with asking engineers first hand. Granted it is a very small dataset, but I was left with the impression that the quality of engineering talent was not really that high. Microsoft also had mixed quality Devs. But you are more likely to come across them specially in the right group. At this stage of your career please focus on maximising your learning and exposure hard and relevant problem space.
Bay Area was where you used to go, but that is changing VERY rapidly. I personally think Seattle is the sweet spot these days. I've lived both places but now I'm back in the southeast. To answer your last question, 2 years is a good tenure but no less than 1 year unless things are really bad. You can get away with hopping around a good amount in your 20s. Doesn't start to look bad until your early 30s.