<p>I am a Junior in CS now and I am wondering what are considered to be the "top company" for CS major? It seems to me that Google is the most prestigious one, yet it is hard to get in. What about other company such as Microsoft,IBM,Intel,Cisco, Sun or other banking companies such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sach. How do you compare one to another, in term of how hard to get in and salary.</p>
<p>I don't think there's any one single "top" company in CS...and it also depends what kind of environment you want and what kind of product you want to work on. As far as Google goes I've heard some good things but also quite a few bad things.</p>
<p>IBM is a very prestigious company to work for, but everyone I know that has worked there has HATED it and left fairly quickly. DO NOT choose a company based on prestige.</p>
<p>And Google is hardly a paragon of a company; There are serious problems with the way it operates (and it shows with how few things they can get to market that are bug free).</p>
<p>What are the bad things about working for google? From what I've heard, the reason they give you so many perks is that they expect you to work a lot of hours.</p>
<p>Read if you're interested in what working for Google is like, seemed like a pretty legit article.</p>
<p>Life</a> at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective Just Say “No” To Google</p>
<p>Before you say "top companies" You have to say what area you want to specialize in.</p>
<p>If you had to go by prestige, I'd say Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo! are viewed as most prestigious.</p>
<p>I'm a freshman/undergrad but I've been working in the tech industry for several years now, so here's my two cents. Big companies can be fun. Apple was pretty fun. Laboratories can be pretty fun too. Buuuut, the most fun I've had working in the computer industry was at startups. Find a group of smart people, find companies that have hard problems, go there, and work on 'em, travel with those people. There's tons of companies in the embedded space, like mobile phones or biotech. Those are wicked fun. New high performance technical computing companies are sprouting up all over the place, those might be worth a look. Just whatever you do, always follow the interesting people and the hard problems and you'll be set. Google is a pretty posh place to work, but how much of the work you do actually makes up a significant part of the final product? Kinda hit and miss... If you can find a startup whose vision you agree with, you'll be on a small team of engineers building significant portions of what could be the next big thing. That's what engineering is about to me. The prestige game only kinda sorta works with colleges, it completely doesn't work for companies.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as the top company in CS. For one thing, small companies are also respected in CS, not just the big players that everyone has heard of.</p>
<p>All the companies that you named are prestigious, but they are hardly the only ones.</p>
<p>It also depends on what, exactly, you want to do in CS.</p>
<p>JoeJoe05, fun article. But do they really work 10-6? I never worked anywhere that didn't want 8 hours, excluding lunch.</p>
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It seems to me that Google is the most prestigious one
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<p>Nah, Google is now getting beat by Facebook. Google even had to go out of its way to "deny" that its losing its best people to Facebook. </p>
<p>*...So why has Google lost something of its cachet among the technorati workforce? </p>
<p>Some commentators have noted that it is no longer the firm it once was.</p>
<p>Far from being a search engine firm with idealistic goals to 'do no evil', it has morphed into a behemoth that rivals other large tech companies.</p>
<p>It now has 16,800 employees worldwide. And the opportunities to strike it rich have diminished. Google's stock option package is not as tempting as it once was now that shares are trading close to $600.</p>
<p>Perhaps more importantly for some, Google no longer has that "anything goes" approach that most start ups possess.</p>
<p>Senior engineer Justin Rosenstein sent an e-mail to friends describing his new Facebook employer as "the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago".</p>
<p>He wrote: "That company where large numbers of stunningly brilliant people congregate and feed off each other's genius. That company that's doing with 60 engineers what teams of 600 can't pull off." *</p>
<p>BBC</a> NEWS | Technology | Google denies staff 'brain drain'</p>
<p>But even Facebook may not be the best place to go, as certain tech startups - often times founded by former Google and Facebook employees - may be even better.</p>
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If you had to go by prestige, I'd say Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo! are viewed as most prestigious.
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<p>See above. </p>
<p>As far as ebay and Yahoo? I'm afraid not. They're seen (perhaps unfairly) as has-beens. It's more prestigious these days to go with something like Apple.</p>
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What about other company such as Microsoft,IBM,Intel,Cisco, Sun
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<p>The first four are OK, but you definitely don't want Sun these days. That formerly proud company is now a sinking ship - becoming increasingly less and less relevant over time. It's sad, because their technology used to be good. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Oracle is still quite good. </p>
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or other banking companies such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sach.
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<p>It would be far far more prestigious to get into a hedge fund or a venture capital firm. Hedge funds in particular hire a lot of computer-oriented quant jocks - i.e. writing large algorithms to discover arbitrage opportunities. Venture capital firms hire CS people not so much for their developer skills per se, but for their knowledge of the tech industry</p>
<p>@Treetopleaf,</p>
<p>The hours that people put into their jobs is highly dependent on the project, team, company culture, etc. Also, keep in mind that some people are willing to work lots of overtime either because they fully enjoy their project or are hoping for some type of reward.</p>
<p>A big draw of Google is the 20% time to pursue one's own project. At least in some cases, it makes up for being assigned work one might not be entirely thrilled about.</p>
<p>Sun is a fantastic company to work at! So much fun from what I've heard. Jeff Bonwick is there, he came up with the slab allocator and oversaw ZFS's creation. Hell, their new app server is really slick and the team that's working on it seems to have a lot of fun. If you know you can get another job, sinking companies are just as fun to work for... and I'm not totally convinced that Sun is sinking.</p>
<p>Do yourselves a favor and ignore prestige. It's an awful metric. Go where the hard problems are and where the cool people are, and there's cool people all over. Hard problems that people will actually give to you are rare.</p>
<p>There's also open source. Mozilla is a fun place to work at.</p>
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Sun is a fantastic company to work at! So much fun from what I've heard. Jeff Bonwick is there, he came up with the slab allocator and oversaw ZFS's creation. Hell, their new app server is really slick and the team that's working on it seems to have a lot of fun. If you know you can get another job, sinking companies are just as fun to work for... and I'm not totally convinced that Sun is sinking.
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<p>Doesn't sound like much fun to me. Not at all.</p>
<p>*Sun now plans to layoff between 1,500 and 2,500 workers to lower costs over the coming year. *</p>
<p>Sun</a> cushions slumping Q3 with layoffs • The Register</p>
<p>*Complaining vividly about the corporate rules inflicted on him at Sun, MySQL co-founder David Axmark has quit his job there, leaving his own future -- and that of the Sun-acquired MySQL open source database project -- in some doubt.</p>
<p>"I have thought about my role at Sun and decided that I am better off in smaller organizations," Axmark wrote in a resignation letter. "I HATE all the rules that I need to follow, and I also HATE breaking them. It would be far better for me to 'retire' from employment and work with Sun on a less formal basis." *</p>
<p>BetaNews</a> | MySQL co-founder quits job at Sun, as open source database frays</p>