Ask HN: Which job should I choose? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which job should I choose?

30 pointsaskhell63 comments

I need to make a decision in the next 8hrs and i need help to decide which choice would be better for me and my career.

The first company is developing software for airline companies and they have a few big clients. The tech i would be working in is Angular, Backbone, Cordova and some PHP.

The second company is into IT security. They develop tools for malware detection and network security. The tech i would be using is JavaScript, jQuery and Kendo UI. I would mostly be building charts in the beginning but there is a possibility of getting a bit more into actual software development later.

Both companies are good standing and the pay is about the same (the IT security company is offering a little bit more). I like the tech the first company is using more, but i'm more interested in IT security than airline software.

Please help me decide, i have 8hrs, what would be better for my career and what branch do you think has a better future?

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Surprised nobody has mentioned this yet: be careful about that non-promise of a "possibility of getting a bit more into actual software development later."

It's very easy for a company to make vague non-promises like this. Consider how you would feel if it took 1 year or 2 years or infinite years for that "getting a bit more into actual software development" thing to happen. Would you quit after a year of waiting? Would you feel like you had wasted your time?

Something to consider.

Yeah, this would be a red flag for me, if you want to be a coder, take the job where you'll be coding from day one.

I just wanted to agree with this. I turned down a job a number of years ago that offered me great thing eventually but you'll be 'just helping push an existing project over the line for a few weeks'. Complete red flag.

There will be other IT security jobs. If you really want one, you should just turn down both offers and wait for one you really want. Good programmers are rare and you can probably wait around for something you like better.

Edit: Also, don't believe promises regarding payrises after 6 months, shares in the company, healthcare, etc. If it's not on the table when you negotiate the contract, be sure you'll be happy when the promises fail to materialise.

I spent 3 years at my last company waiting for the "possibility" I was promised in the interview. Admittedly it was great job that I did enjoy the stuff I actually was doing, but the constant waiting and hoping for that elusive 'possibility' did gnaw at me, and heavily contributed to me quitting.

So basically my advice is to heavily discount any promises of future possibilities and judge the job mainly by what you know you will be doing.

I turned down a job offer based on promises, over two years ago. Nothing has happened regarding promition, hiring of more staff.

Just quit as I received another job offer, and when I asked to have "something definite in writing" this time, then the wonderful promises vanished.

Flip a coin. Seriously. If you don't like the decision the coin made for you then ignore it and do the opposite.

Bingo. I've also heard this sentiment expressed as "Flip a coin. While it's in the air, your brain will be wishing for one of the sides. Pick that choice and forget about the coin."

+1. Once you know what your heart really wants (when the coin is in the air), you don't even have to see whether it was a heads or a tails. :)

The version of this that resonated with me is a quote from an otherwise-terrible movie called "The Very Thought of You." From the best Google result I could find:

  Pederson: "You have a decision to make...What's the problem? Bearing in mind there's no such thing as a difficult decision."
  Lawrence: "Sorry?"
  Pederson: "Well, every day we make hundreds of thousands of decisions. In a year, it runs into tens of millions. People get themselves into knots. The truth is, decisions are easy. Know why? Because every time, every time, we already know the answers."
  Lawrence: "You think?"
  Pederson: "Absolutely. Trade secret. Always tell my boys. You see, you didn't come to me to make a decision. You came to me because you didn't like the decision you'd already made."

I've found this to be mostly true and that once I view a tough decision through the lens of already having made it and only needing to accept that I don't like the decision I've made, the decision becomes a lot clearer and I'm able to move past it.

Consider picking based on other factors like humanity and people how you like the people you will work with. Often this is more important then small differences in career choice.

In terms of "career", well the airline has more stuff to add to you resume.

The airline industry is also very cyclical, which could have some bearing depending on what you mean by "career."

My 2 cents:

- The security job is more hardcore. It's a branch of software that you probably will find hard to learn about on your own, with lots of little juicy details. Airline software, I'll bet most devs could figure out how to write if they understood the domain, and there are probably fewer pitfalls. But I'm no expert on either.

- Your subjective experience will depend a lot on the individual people you meet and work with. You don't have much other than gut feeling on that.

- Tech, I wouldn't worry. There's always going to be a whole bunch floating around. Once you get in the zone, you can pick up a new language/framework quite quickly.

- Don't worry too much about your decision. It seems hard to choose, but that probably means the outlook is similar for the two. Otherwise it wouldn't seem hard.

Oh come on, he's be using javascript and kendo UI to make graphs. That's not hardcore security programming.

That's the very antithesis of hardcore programming. Apart from tearing your hair out at the shitty kendo API designs.

The security job sounds like a boring job to me from his description, sounds like they'd be using him to animate a bunch of graphs on their website or something.

OP, there's almost nothing worse in programming than making graphs.

Graphs are fun, CHARTS are boring.

Haha, that's a more accurate assessment!

OP, it's so hard to know what a job is like from a tiny second hand description, so don't take my words too literally, it might be fine and more involved, but as someone else said in the thread:

there is a possibility of getting a bit more into

Is code for:

we're going to dangle this thing in front of you for a year or two and then conveniently forget we ever said it

"there's almost nothing worse in programming than making graphs."

Reports? I was offered a significant pay raise to work exclusively on reports. I declined.

Pick the one with better, higher quality people. In the long run what matters most is who you surround yourself with. You'll learn more from smarter people and become better as a result.

I can help you make a decision.

Take a deep breath.

You will be fine. It won't matter which job you take.

lol, why?

Both choices have their pros and cons. If you pick the wrong then you won't be stuck there for long anyway. Follow your heart. Don't bother rationalizing.

it reminds me a bit of this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/th/harder_choices_matter_less/

IMHO, at your career stage (if I'm inferring your "career stage" correctly), I'd consider these two possible avenues to advance your career:

- The craft of designing and maintaining software

- The problem domain software is being applied to

Some people might rationalize this as a generalist vs. specialist argument. However, I see being a badass software expert as just being a certain kind of specialist.

Both approaches will help you grow into bigger shoes over time, assuming the most optimistic outcome in either path. If you focus on honing your software craft, you can fit in many places and easily internalize any system as your chops get better.

If you focus on a particular problem domain (you seem to be interested in IT security), then over time you can become a subject matter expert. At this point, you can contribute knowledge back to your community, use your domain insight to identify a market and new product to sell, or just become a prized star employee in the companies focused on your chosen problem domain.

Being an all-around software badass can also make you a prized star employee after you grow into that notoriety.

I suppose it's possible to mix both approaches if your role accomodates this.

I guess my ultimate answer is similar to what others have said- follow what your heart says :-) Hopefully this adds some perspective to your choice. Best of luck!

You might find this TED talk enlightening.

How to make hard choices - Ruth Chang https://youtu.be/8GQZuzIdeQQ

Sorry for the terrible formatting, I'm on mobile (and lazy at this time of the morning.)

If this video helps you, more power to you. Personally I think her talk reflects just her own struggle and how she somehow managed to come to terms with it. For one thing, claiming that the kind of decisions discussed in the video are on par is moot. Sure, for practical reason it might be helpful to assume it. But just because we don't know a way to compute a preference doesn't mean there isn't a way we can do it somewhere in the distant future. But that's rather a minor nitpick. My main problem with her talk is that she assumes that we all can be pro active individuals as opposed to drifters who float around aimlessly. If you want to be proactive you need a goal and setting a goal is itself a hard decision. Now according to her, comparing goals is not going to lead to success as goals can be on par. So we need something else that makes us finally do something. Maybe this "something else" is not part of the rational world but we got to have it. As far as I can tell she doesn't explain how initial motivation comes up and what to do if it is missing. How do you become a pink socks wearing, donuts eating person? Maybe by just drifting around?

Assuming that we possess some degree of free will I think it is best to prevent hard choices to turn up in the first place. That probably doesn't always work out but maybe you can shift the odds in your favor. For example, if you start programming very early and become really good at it by the time you have to decide for a career then your choice is (rather likely) to be easy. You already have a marketable skill and motivation to do more (otherwise you would have given up earlier). No vague "Let's do an MBA and see where that leads me" feelings that ultimately lead to hard choices: Should I do Marketing? Accounting? Something not related to my degree? The point is not to bash MBAs here but the problem that this is one of the many paths where you can get far without any "real" motivation. But eventually you reach a point where motivation is key (the choice) and if you lack it the choice is going to be hard. From a practical point of view your decision doesn't really matter (so I sort of agree with her) but again I think that preventing hard choices leads to better outcomes ( a happier life) than any option you may decide for when making a hard choice (most of the time)

Anyhow, the wisest universal advice is "Don't panic!", though. In a way, everything is ok the way it is.

Two answers:

1. Pick the one that will let you meet more people, whether as coworkers, customers, tradeshow attendees, etc. People will be far more valuable to your career than what frameworks you know.

2. "When in doubt, flip a coin, because in that second it's in the air, you realize that you already know how you want it to come down." You already know which one you want, so why are you asking us?

It may be helpful to think about how your work for each company would look on a resume. The company, unless it's a brand name everybody knows for it's technology like Google, is less important then your role.

The airline company software lets you talk about full stack (don't worry if you don't like PHP, you can always learn another stack), and maybe scaling issues. You also get soft skills potentially, have to deal with changing client requirements.

The IT security... well you get to do front end dev, and maybe they'll let you do something real at some point? But maybe you get some interesting experience integrating with APIs.

It honestly doesn't matter too much, you'll be doing dev work for both. If the money is a big difference in your mind, it wouldn't hurt you to ask the airline software company if they will match what the IT company offers you, or if they can provide some other perk (a signing bonus, discount airfare, extra vacation days).

Yes, i think the job description of the first company would look better on my resume. But IT security is a much more interesting field to me although i think it might be more difficult for me to find a job if i had to leave the company after a couple of years.

Thanks for the advice.

Flip a coin. If you resent the result, you know what you really wanted. If you are happy with the result, you are fine, too.

Both sound fine in terms of career, and you say they offer about the same pay.

The big thing you haven't mentioned is working conditions. Does either demand unpaid overtime? Require you to work in an open plan office? Have a long commute, particularly if it requires driving? Have a noncompete clause in the employment contract?

If they're the same as regards working conditions, flip a coin, see how you feel about the result, then act on that feeling.

As people write, you have to decide on your own, but I can share what would I do. First, consider technologigies. Do I like any of thechnologies more than those in second oportunity (I assume there aren't technologies you dislike). This is not very important though. Second, think about what company do. I'd prefer security much more and this is very big plus. What would you do: design or maintenance (I think we all like first more ;)). But still it is important how the work is arranged in the company. Using scrum or chaos, what tools are used? It's maybe 0,5 as important as second. Startups win over corpo, that's the rule for me. People, I would choose nice, energetic team over dull corpo crowd. In fact, I already know I wouldn't choose second anyway. :) If still in doubt I would refuse to both and look for something better. I don't know if you can afford, but I have better things to do than work in medicore environment. ;) I hope this can help you a little bit, good luck!

> what would be better for my career and what branch do you think has a better future?

Based on your limited description, I think both would be fine your career, and both branches will do well enough in the near future.

Questions to ask yourself:

* how much freedom do the companies offer you? How many of your own ideas can you bring in?

* are the good programmers how can mentor you at each company?

* how much does the choice of tooling affect you? That what you'll work with all the time. How fast is it going to change?

* how much does the business branch actually affect your work? If you're doing frontend development for an infosec company, you're not doing intrusion detection or the like; if you do frontend development for an airline, you won't do flight or luggage routing. My point is that it's not a given that the branch will actually influence your work very much. (It might still be, though).

* How many people will use the software you write? How much does that matter to you?

* Are there any ethical differences? Do you support the companies' values and methods?

What do you know about life inside each company? About the culture there? It's something that will affect your life day to day.

More than anything else, remember that it doesn't matter that much which you choose. You've got two great jobs on offer, and they are just jobs - you can leave any time if you don't like them.

From the interviews i've had it seems like the airline software company has more experts in the field that i would be working in at the beginning. The team i would be working in at the other company is smaller but the atmosphere looked friendlier and they seemed a bit nicer to me.

I'm trying to gather more information about the companies, what do you think would be a good way going about this? I'm using LinkedIn to gather info on their employees.

What about benefits? Insurance, 401k, Vacation hours? Distance to commute? Room for growth? People you will be working?

Thanks to everybody for your advice. I've decided to accept the airline software development company offer. I'm just way more interested in the technologies they are using and as someone said it looks like in the IT security company i would mostly be doing Kendo UI charts.

I You feel good at these all technologies/frameworks and the salary and location are pretty similiar in both of these companies (or You just don't care at the moment about it) I would suggest You to take the 1. offer.

Why?

I'm a webdev and I love building websites. This company build apps using hyped (at the moment) technologies so if something go wrong then You'll find new job easily (I'm getting job offers which requires angular/backbone/cordova experience all the time)

On the other hand, IT security is trending niche, which can be more stable than web development (where market is really huge and dynamic).

But hey, in the end, it's up to You and You should choose wisely what suits You best.

Job 2 (with the security thing) sounds like nonsense. 'A bit more into actual software development'? Also you won't be involved in any of the development it seems. It sounds like an internship-level job.

I now have enough experience to recommend that you make your decision based on finding great people. Technology stacks and early roles matter less than attaching yourself to a great group of individuals. That's how opportunities arise.

Of course, it's hard to evaluate just from a few interviews. But it also works once you are inside: make sure to find the rising stars (they may not be much senior than you by the way). You'll learn much more and be exposed to much greater opportunities.

Hey buddy !! i am in similar situation. I have two job offers with following :

1) Security company. good salary and facilities like transport facility.Offering stocks. But, the company is splitting into two ( u can surely guess the name). Big brand.

2) Talent management company offering solutions as SAAS. Nice exposure to multi-tenant cloud infra. Higher fixed pay. Cooler work culture. Became private from public (yes the other way round)

I am extremely confused which two ? May be suggesting me can help you find yours.

(2) seems like obviously the right answer for you. unless you really really love security (you crazy paranoid fucker), (1) will have extra crazy politics and higher probability of getting stuck somewhere you didn't expect / don't want to be. if the stock comp is really good and doesn't come with weird strings attached then maybe (1) could be competitive. career options after experience on "multi-tenant cloud infra" are pretty good though.

yeah "multi-tenant cloud infra" , is what attracting me too. thanks.

Based on your comments, the airline company seems like it would have the best opportunity for personal growth. If it's early in your career, I'd go for that one as it gives you experience working with front-end, back-end and mobile.

Edit: there's also the fact that with the security company you're starting off making charts and maybe moving into more dev, but there's also the chance you could get stuck making charts

Have you made a decision? If not and you'd still like some help email me at samuel at thelittleyes.com and let's setup a time to chat. I coach folks through these kinds of decisions for a living. I'll give you the HN special, no charge for the first hour, and I think we'll probably be able to get you the clarity you need in an hour.

This choice has a lot to do with you yourself, about which you didn't say very much.

Assuming both are good in terms of finance, location, etc. go with which team you think you'd enjoy working with the most -- smartest people, most compatible with your working style. Plan for 2-3 years.

If that's a wash, I'd take the security company.

> I need to make a decision in the next 8hrs [...]

You probably don't. The market for programmers is hot enough right now, that any deadline the companies might have set is probably a bluff.

Having said that, having a deadline is probably a good thing for you. Avoids endless overthinking and procrastination.

Ah, an exploding offer: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html

I would join the smaller team (not smaller company). If that number is not known, I would join the company whose interview I enjoyed more (had the interviewers read your resume before they interviewed you? how intelligent/relevant were their questions? and so on)

Don't take the advice of strangers online. Talk with your peers who know you and know your interests the most.

If you don't have a solid peer network, go with your gut, and deal with the consequences later.

Congratulations on two job offers!

Tech is always changing. Think about what you'd like to be working on in 5–10 years. The jobs you take now will help you "write the resume" you will need later.

Good luck!

If both offers seem equal to you, why not choose on the location?

EDIT: I just read it would be in the same city, but what about distance to home? District, etc...

Yes. Don't underestimate the importance of things like commute times and working in a nice part of town.

Go for the job that gets you doing more software development right away. Life is to short to waste it doing stuff your not interested in doing.

I wouldn't focus so much on the tech as on the purpose of what you'll be doing.

In the end, follow your gutt feeling and don't look back.

Don't focus on the tech/stack. Go for work that you find interesting and where you like the company culture and people.

location?

it would also be ideal to get into the situation where you tell both offers that you are considering another offer at x price and that you will take y time to decide. then you hold the negotiation instead of feeling rushed.

sometimes the side that wants you more will come back with a bigger offer or ask you what's meaningful for you to see if they can give you that.

EDIT: i don't wanna be giving up to much info on the companies

hey. i meant that consider the location difference in the jobs. maybe there's a place you'd like to work in, live near or commute to over the other.

Go for the one with the shortest commute. ;)

Pick 2. It seems to offer a more specific skillset. That will allow you much more leverage in the future.

In most cases Choice, is always between two good things. Take one. It does not matter which.

I'd go for security, seems more interesting (to me).

You should be able to decide on your own.

I would pick the first, because I hate security. Everything bad and annoying on a project and come from security requirements. Yes, I know why, but if you aren't going to help me write the correct code, you are just putting lots of barriers in my way.

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