I graduated with my CS degree in 2022. I had internship offers at Google, Amazon and Indeed. My thoughts on each option at the time: Google: Developer Relations Engineer role. Mostly writing boilerplate code for Google cloud. Team seemed nice, work seemed boring. Amazon: AWS role on new robotics software, working on front end. I am not interested in front end, I want to do backend. Manager is incredibly intense and I get the impression wlb will be terrible. Indeed: Backend distributed systems team (what I’m interested in) and I really vibe with the manager and team. I go with Indeed thinking it will be a good start to direct my career into distributed systems which is my interest. I get my return offer reneged and rush to interview after graduation, get offers at Expedia and a bank but go with the bank because I can’t move to Seattle. I am underpaid at the bank and it’s a toxic culture. I feel like I should have taken Google or Amazon and at least I would have the year-long offer option and would make good money or at the very least have a better name on my resume when job searching. I am looking to jump right now but getting judged for trying to jump so early and the market just feels impossible. Did I screw myself over? Prestige above all?
i have never heard of Indeed..
Most ppl have
Indeed.
You shouldn’t really prioritize WLB and especially not remote work in your first few years.
Or you can, and never care about climbing any imaginary endless ladder until you get sick or burned out
Thank you for the discourse AirBnB
Join AWS s3 or ec2 team, most prestigious product of all time. Then die from depression 18 months later.
Woah don't forget about DynamoDB
🤣
Fully remote is not a big plus for your first job. It's a big minus as you will not have as many learning opportunities. Go back to Google/Amazon and start building your resume
Nah it’s up to you entirely
Depends entirely on the company culture, IMO. Remote-first orgs with healthy code review processes are far superior for coming up as a junior to in person orgs with mediocre processes.
Early career people focusing on WLB and remote are probably the dumbest ones. You should be grinding to get really good because as you get older, your brain starts to degrade a bit, making learning new things harder.
Lmao why would your brain “degrade”. Do you have dementia
You think you can learn as quick as younger folks? 😂😂 I dont have energy to grind 24/7 anymore and am seeking comfort. Im less interested in new challenges, which makes my brain “degrade”
Also don't cry over spilt milk
You did the right thing - starting at Google as L3 your comp would kinda be trash , and dev rel you don’t really gain skills
You’re just a kid. 👦🏻 You can always interview and get into Prestige, nobody cares and you’ll get decent opportunity. The market for newbies is small right now. So you need to be prepared all the time and grab that opportunity as soon as it comes your way.
Banks are always the wrong choice for anyone reading. Btw, I'm in the same boat as OP
Can you elaborate why? Is the culture ?
I agree. In my experience there was too much bureaucracy and politics. Managers were always looking to take over other departments and battling. Pay was average (maybe slightly below). No equity was given, benefits were less than average. A lot of time was spent trying to push things through or motivate folks to get something done quickly (else they'd sit on things with no sense of urgency). Plus side was wlb was okay and for folks who want an easy life it's probably fine.
Indeed was the best one because it would have made you a well rounded back end swe
Unfortunately OP graduated into one of the worst years right as companies were starting to think about layoffs. Could have happened to OP at any of the companies they mentioned.
The words "well rounded" aren't needed in this instance