<p>A lot of engineering/CS students shoot for jobs at companies like Google/Microsoft etc. Are these jobs really better than a job at a smaller local software/engineering company. I'm assuming pay will be higher at big name companies. But do big name companies require more hours? I'm assuming that big name companies are more structured, and the work for entry level positions is more mundane, is this true?</p>
<p>I’m sure there are people at Google/Apple/Microsoft who love working there, and there are people who hate working there.</p>
<p>I have some friends that work at Google. They seem bored by their work, but they’re sticking around because the company pays very well.</p>
<p>I personally have no interest in working at Google/Apple/Microsoft, and have never sent them a resume.</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>After a few years, you will see that software engineers with similar skill sets and similar years of experience will make similar salaries. The “big popular company” thing is…well hell, I’ll say it…more of a younger person’s mindset (including me once upon a time) where folks want to work at a company that will “impress others”. Sometimes getting hired by a “big popular company” is the last time that someone can get rewarded for their academic achievements, so of course aiming for those “big popular companies” will be high on many fresh grads.</p>
<p>When you get older, you will find out that direct deposit is direct deposit. Running Oracle on a Solaris box at Company X is the same as running Oracle on a Solaris box at Company Y. You also find out that ACME Mortgage Company could care less if one works at Google or works are Gargle. ACME Mortgage cares about your income and your FICO score.</p>
<p>At those super-big tech companies, I think your experience is going to be extremely team-dependent. There are tons of teams that work on really boring things, but there are also a lot of teams working on exciting things that wouldn’t have come to fruition without the backing of a big company. If you do happen to get an offer at one of these companies, make sure it’s for a team you’re actually interested in.</p>
<p>I don’t think hours are really tracked, but what you accomplish certainly is. You may or may not have to work more hours depending on how competent you are.</p>
<p>Edit: I don’t think what GLOBALTRAVELER says is quite true. Sure, “running Oracle on a Solaris box at Company X is the same as running Oracle on a Solaris box at Company Y”, but there are very few places besides Google that you can work on services that scale to hundreds of millions of users.</p>
<p>I just toured Facebook and heard a worker speak about the experience of working at Facebook. The guy comes into work at 11 am and leaves at 7, or whenever he wants. The guy gets to work on WHATEVER he wants to improve Facebook. I mean literally he can do whatever he wants. He can join projects that he likes, or start something new. This job is amazing for anyone who works there. You get to do what you love with ultimate freedom, and it is most definitely better than a regular CS job.</p>
<p>Having interned at Facebook, I can confirm that it is a fantastic place to work. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is considering joining. (No, I don’t work there, myself.)</p>
<p>Not necessarily.</p>
<p>The good parts:
- Secure and well paid, because they work on popular products.
- Interesting, if their products interest you.
- They may work on really cool stuff, because they can afford to build more complicated things.</p>
<p>The (may be) bad parts:
- You need to work on their products.
- You need to work in their system and by someone else’s rules/plan, i.e. you may miss the flexibility of a very small company where all employees can have a say on things/projects.</p>
<p>You will get varying answers. Some folks may lean more to what are the products and projects. Some may lean to money and security a little more than product and projects.</p>
<p>Me?..as I got older…I started to care more about how much money could I make while reducing the amount of work I had to put in.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, the experience will allow you to pick your second job so much easier. Also, there are some great minds at these companies.</p>
<p>Re: #5</p>
<p>Yes, but most people who work there don’t have that type of job, and many larger companies do have a few people in “speculative research” type jobs similar to that.</p>
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<p>However, the type of jobs you get can determine how well you develop your skills, and which skills you will end up developing, which in turn can affect the following jobs that you will get (which can matter in terms of availability, interest, and compensation).</p>
<p>Of course, this does not mean that GAFAM is the only place to get good experience. It does appear that most high school students posting here focus on GAFAM because they are the most obvious companies in the computer industry, even though they are far from the only ones.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus: Software Engineers at Facebook do have that kind of freedom. When you start at Facebook, after participating in a six week “boot camp”, you have the option of joining whatever team you want (the theory being that you will put forth your best effort on the team you’re most interested in).</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s wrong for high-school students to focus on the big names. If they have the opportunity, though, they should try interning at other companies to get more perspective.</p>
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<p>But once you join a team, you would be working on whatever projects the team is working on, which is quite a bit different from being in a “speculative research” group where you could work on “WHATEVER” you want to, right?</p>
<p>Right, but I don’t think the worker Hendrix96 mentioned is actually in such a group. It seems like he was talking more about his freedom in joining projects and teams rather than being able to randomly do whatever he wants for the day.</p>
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<p>It’s just an illusion of flexibility and freedom… that’s the thing younger people don’t understand about these top companies. They offer the insane perks for a reason - they want you to live there! </p>
<p>Not saying the big companies are terrible places to work, because they’re not. But to say that they are clearly better is irrelevant… there is a give and take with everything in life. Sure, you might get paid more working for Google/Facebook/Apple, but you’re also living in the bay area paying $3,000-10,000 a month for rent or mortgage on top of everything else that’s expensive in that area. Sure you might have the exclusive job perks, but you’re also sacrificing your personal life and hobbies (this problem is greatly compounded when you start having a family)… Sure you might have elite-school grads as coworkers, but do you really want to be surrounded by such highly strung, hypercompetitive people all the time? </p>
<p>Things are not always what they appear.</p>
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“Better” is sort of a subjective. I think there are real and important differences between various kinds of jobs in software… but what you might think is “better”, someone else might consider “worse”, and vice versa.</p>
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If we partition the job space into [public sector, private sector non-software, private sector small software, private sector small software], I think the following observations might be more or less on point:
- You will make less money in the public sector (e.g., government agencies) than in the private sector, although historically the job security and pay consistency has been good.
- Most private sector large software companies will consistently pay you fairly well.
- Private sector small software companies will show much greater variance in the amount of compensation they offer employees; most of the time you will probably get less, but every once in a while you may get more, possibly much more, than market rate.
- Pay in the private sector non software company category is all over the place and may track better with pay for other professions; however, the average is probably somewhere between small and large private sector software companies.</p>
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In my experience, quite the opposite. Using the same (limited and na</p>
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<p>I sort of agree with you on that last part. But as with many things in life, the choice is really up to the individual. You don’t have to let these perks rule your life; plenty of people live balanced lives while working at these companies.</p>
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<p>There’s no way you’re paying that much in rent as a new grad unless you have delusions regarding how much you’re making. I would say that $2k is a high upper bound for most places, and I’m pretty sure $1000-$1500 is very doable (not that this isn’t still relatively expensive, but it’s nowhere near the figures you stated).</p>
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<p>This is just a strawman. I can’t speak for Google or Apple, but my coworkers at Facebook were far from highly strung or hyper-competitive. I also barely knew which schools people had graduated from.</p>
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<p>[Average</a> rent now $2,128 in Santa Clara County, the highest in the state - Silicon Valley Business Journal](<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/19/average-rent-now-2128-in-santa-clara.html]Average”>http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/19/average-rent-now-2128-in-santa-clara.html)</p>
<p>[RealFacts</a> LLC 2Q13 Executive Summary | RealFacts](<a href=“http://realfacts.com/news/07-25-2013/realfacts-llc-2q13-executive-summary]RealFacts”>http://realfacts.com/news/07-25-2013/realfacts-llc-2q13-executive-summary)</p>
<p>That mostly corroborates what I said. An average implies a distribution; it’s not inconceivable for someone without a family to get a decent place within the $1000-$2000 range.</p>
<p>If there are 1 bedroom/1 bath apartments (not studios) available in the SV for anywhere close to $1000, they’re not available for long. However, one’s share of a 2+ bedroom apartment could be $1000.</p>