Got offers from those companies as fresh grad. Any suggestions? I personally love the vibe at Drive.ai and Pinterest, but many say that the first job should start with a big company and gain knowledge in sophisticated systems. Any thoughts are welcome and appreciated! Compensation wise, Pinterest>FB>drive.ai. I care about work life balance (as long as it is not crazy) but personal growth seems important too.
I would recommend drive.ai. Your first job also plays a big role in defining the area where you will start specializing and AI and self driving car is a great place to be in current market. The knowledge and experience you will gain will give you lot of demand and scope to grow
That is exactly what I am thinking of! But this also means riskier moves and less stability...I think the pros and cons are: either go to the big company and learn from the best, or go to a small company and grow quickly. Another concern is that AV market is so competitive right now... not sure how to decide especially this is my first job.
lol
People make all the difference. I would pick a place where u get to work with the most inspiring and/or influential people. This is assuming u like the work that they are doing.
Drive.ai. Being in a small team full of researchers and in one of the most interesting up-and-coming industries of our generation is gonna open up a lot of doors for you. Regardless if they succeed or not. Facebook and ad companies like Pinterest will be around for a long time. Take the the risk.
FB - if you land in a team where you get to work with analytics, i saw a few early on posts in 2008ish where they were complaining on hadoop mailing lists that their cluster was running slow, and someone revealed that they were doing petabytes scale of data back then (seemed to be just one of their teams) - drive.ai - maybe maybe not - you need to be in a place where you learn how complex systems are designed and built and not asked to build one, itād give you a good foundation at first and then you can do pretty much whatever you want ...
You are a fresh grad so you can take some risks. Go with drive.ai. You will 100% certainly work on real problems that actually matter whereas there's a decent chance you will work on complete crud at FB or Pinterest. I work on self driving cars right now and believe me when I say this market is hot like how social media was hot 6+ years ago. There will probably be an acquisition frenzy in the AD space and drive.ai will probably get acquired sooner or later ($$$ if it happens). Also with just one or two years experience you can make a jump and earn more than you would at FB or Pinterest.
You're very young so you have time to accumulate money. Forget about money for a moment and think what would you like to do the most in the next couple of years. The choice you make now might set you on a carreer path or another with different opportunities along the road. Working on social media or AD is going to shape your skills differently. The technology knowledge you'll gain is transferable but the domain expertise is what can make you stand out. Try to determine which area you're most interested in. To me nothing is worse than doing work that is not meaningful to yourself. I think you have more space to grow in a smaller company. Many times the roles aren't very well defined and you'll have to stretch fast to fill the gaps. You will be pushed to grow but most probably at the expense of your work/life balance. Here's another thing you might or might not care about: in a 100 person company you'll be 1% while in a 10000 person company... you do the math. I'd say choose the startup if you like what they do. You'll have time to switch back if you won't like it. The corporations will always be there but the chance to be a pioneer in a field could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
+1
Pinterest has the best work life balance by far, unlimited PTO and company has a chill get stuff done culture rather than stay long hours. Most people are gone before the free dinner. It also has the best comp, as you said. If you want to gain the most knowledge about sophosticated systems, join a startup because you have the most flexibility on what you work on and you learn more when there are fewer people on the team and you have to take on big tasks. That being said, Iām sure all of these are good options so you canāt really go wrong. As a new grad who picked pinterest over Pinterest over FB and others year ago, Iām glad I made this choice primarily due to great career advancement (get to take on big tasks to prove myself), lots of learning (you have teams of less than 5 engineers working on systems that serve to hundreds of millions of users), and really great work life balance (never feel stressed, can take it easy/work few hours if i need). Comp wise, Iām getting paid significantly more at pinterest than I would at other companies.
Thanks for the info. I'm interviewing with their ads backend team (through friends referral) and sounds like a great place.
No problem, on ads backend team you will have opportunities to make high impact. I think pinterest is especially good for new grads, as most of the new grad group that joined a couple years back are still around, so I think you will like it here
I think big companies are great for learning too but I like the leadership at drive.ai which seems a cut above the average startup. Agree with š there will be consolidation and if they get acquired it would be awesome to have been part of the team career-wise, even if the payout is not $$$ or if you end up moving elsewhere.
Facebook >> all
Thx. Would you mind sharing why you say so?
Gain some best practices from these companies. You will become a strong engineer and system design person. Then make a move to start ups