Ask HN: Should you carefully choose the first company you work at?

I'm from a place where a lot of attention is paid to the first company you worked at. If at all that company is among one of the best, it becomes easier to get into other good companies irrespective of the quality of the work done in that company. For example, looking at stats from paysa.com, one can readily identify that a good percentage of people that are newly hired by a company come from a specific set of other companies. I think this to be true only for the case of the Big 5. What is your take on this?