Hacker News Reader

Comment by slewis | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is either saying go to a big corp or go to a startup as your first job.

What I usually tell new grads is: Get offers from both, and take the job that has the best potential person or people that you'll be able to learn from. There are a bunch of ways you can research this. Try asking people on the team to tell you who they've learned the most from in their career.

Do not take a job where you'll be a lone wolf. As a new grad your goal should be to find great people to work with and learn from them.

If you want to have a balanced career you should try both big corps and startups, but ordering doesn't matter.

View on HN

Do not take a job where you'll be a lone wolf

Good point. Fresh out of school I went to a tiny company of under 10 people. I had a great time and I was really impressed with the skills of the people I worked with.

But within 18 months or so it became obvious that I had by far the most theoretical knowledge of anyone there and a lot of their approach was guesswork. In two years, I began to realize I was just as good an engineer as any of them, just inexperienced.

I should probably have left after year three when the fun-factor was in sharp decline, but I stayed 5 more years, then took a job at at $BIGCO where my salary almost doubled instantly and projects were much, much bigger and infinitely more fun.

^^ Great advice. I had a college student ask me for input on this very question this morning and my response was not to stress too much about finding "the best, most ultimate company ever to work for," but to find a position where you can learn a lot and develop skills you know you need from people willing to invest time in you. (As an aside, something like 70% of people say the most stressful part of their job is their boss. So if there are ways to screen for working with someone who is willing to take the time to cultivate you, amazing.) I think it's tough, especially for the generation of students graduating from college right now (millennials coached to believe they need to have a HUGE impact wherever they go and to believe that their contributions are insanely important), to understand that a first job is just a first step and is not career-defining, in my opinion. You can work somewhere, get some good experience, and then leverage that to get a job you're really excited about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com