Ask HN: How much does company name matter on a resume?

Personally, I care more about what an prospective employee was doing rather than the where. If you are a Software Engineer at Unknown Widgets Corp (UWC) that has been heading up a small team of engineers to build a complete product, then I'm more interested than if you're a Software Engineer that has been silo'd in a very specific area at Dell.

All that being said the company you're at does matter for a couple of reasons. One is there is a small level of bias towards known companies. If two engineers have been doing the same kind of work at Facebook or UWC, I'll probably have a slight unconscious bias towards the engineer from Facebook.

Ultimately, I think the best bet is to go where you think you'll be happiest and have the most opportunities to learn. It's good to think about the impact that decisions will have on your long-term career, but the best way to get ahead is to be a stellar engineer. The happier you are in your day-to-day work, the more effort you'll put in to growing as an engineer to meet the challenges. And the more challenges that you're faced with, and the more smart people that surround you, the better opportunity you'll have to grow.

Go with what sounds more like the interesting work (plus, it shows you keep your word).

Yes, the company name can have an effect. I worked early on for a major bank (global name), which made other banks more likely to look at and hire me, which made it even more likely major banks would want me, so I worked for lots of them. Got a bit typecast (but, that's where the money was ...).

So after Dell, you'd perhaps give off more of an "enterprise" vibe (and likely have very dull work!).

With the other company, it sounds like you'd be able to show more practical experience, and a less staid choice of company, which could make you more interesting to younger companies.

> So after Dell, you'd perhaps give off more of an "enterprise" vibe (and likely have very dull work!).

I agree. I am weary when I see big company names on a resume. I've had interviews where someone's whole job was creating DTOs for a service layer or writing queries in a database. That's the worst kind of pigeonhole and it happens in big companies where everyone is in their own silo.

People become their inputs (specs) and their outputs (code) and people are layered in the same way code is, like an assembly line. And since the inputs and outputs are standardized, whole layers can be outsourced. As a business owner, I can appreciate the benefits of predictable results, but as a developer and a human, I can't justify hiring someone who is simply a cog in a machine and happy being that.

> shows you keep your word

Wait, shows who? The company who pressured the OP into accepting an offer without sufficient time to think about it?

Future employers aren't likely to be able to figure out that someone bailed on an internship before even starting it.

All thing being equal, yes, the company name does matter (at least as much as what you do there), to most people spending the requisite 200 milliseconds scanning your resume and/or profile 5 years from now. That is, again, assuming all other things about the role description being roughly equal.

But in a grossly imbalanced situation such as yours:

With Dell I'd be a "software intern" and they can't tell me anything more about it. With the second company I would be working on doing Full-Stack development to build (another) IoT product, which seems very interesting to me.

Where company A seems eager to heap responsibility and challenge after challenge on you, while company B refuses to even tell you anything about the role other than that you'll be an "intern"... and given that company B, while you could say they're a household name, isn't exactly a Google, Facebook or Tesla... or anything close to it, really...

... then I hope you won't have any hesitancy in choosing the role offered by company A.

It's not just the name, it's the name in the niche.

If A (Dell/IBM) is a generic job, a small piece in a long, long, generic chain, and B (lesser known but global) is much better known in your area of interest, then B's name counts a lot more.

If A (Dell/IBM) is a global name, but you'll be in a small team, for example, designing chip architecture, and B is a bunch of rambling idiots that got lucky and now believe they will take over the world, then choose A.

Make the choice based on your department, role, and manager (the more senior the better is often, though not always, true), not overall company name.