Choosing my Dream Company

Passion or obsession?

Job hunting is like matrimonial search — every candidate wants to get hired by their dream company while every company wants to hire an excellent engineer — both looking for suitors that meet their checklist. In the end they both end up making certain compromises for a healthy relationship. For computer engineers, it’s the startups and the Tech Giants, or as some people prefer the term FAANG, that they dream to work for at least once in their lifetime. But in recent years, this dream has turned into an obsession where freshers(less than 3 years experience) tend to neglect opportunities at good companies that are neither Tech Giants nor startups. As a matter of fact, there are several factors that contribute to building your career and one should consider these while choosing a company — be it a tech giant, a cool startup or otherwise.

1. Brand Value: Brand value of your company helps you stand out among the crowd as it vouches about your potential. Tech giants have a universal appeal and every layman knows about them. But what’s more important is your company having a good brand value within the software industry(check at Glassdoor, Ambitionbox, YCombinator 😎).
2. Work Culture: Try to learn from existing employees about their work experience so far, how they maintain work-life balance and see how you can find some “me time” to pursue your interests(or personal projects) as it helps to rejuvenate yourself and boost your productivity.
3. Peers: Your experience at a company is depends upon the team you are assigned to and your peers. Peers are your biggest source of learning who help you gel into any new company and also adapt to the new environment. Having peers from diverse work profiles and academic background helps largely in your overall professional growth.
4. Technology: The choice of tech entirely depends upon what has to be done rather than I wanna use this tech anyhow. Established companies focus on software scaling, optimisation at application(runtime and compiler) and database level to sustain in the long term. On the other hand, startups focus more on delivering the feature quickly. Judging a company only on their choice of technology is foolish.
5. Ownership of product: When working with a startup, you will have an end-to-end knowledge(a full-stack developer 😎) of your project and very often work with different teams. While all companies expect you to show similar ownership traits, opportunities to work and interact with teams dependent on your project comes very seldom.
6. Business knowledge: However good an engineer one is, one must know the business impact of their work as it helps you grow within the organisation. In startups one works closely with founders and product managers who drive the “business”. In the process you learn about the customer behaviour and have a very clear idea regarding your impact on end user.
7. Career Growth: Startups provide a steep learning curve. While learning opportunities at established companies are good, they aren’t similar to those at startups. Good learning comes with intense work pressure. Not everyone can handle the fast-paced work environment of a startup and there’s no shame in it. Choose what suits you best rather than going with the crowd.
8. Money: Tech giants are hands down paymasters in the software industry and very few companies can even think of matching it and even fewer supersede it. If you are paid big, you ought to work harder and be more responsible. ‘With great power there must also come great responsibility’ — what uncle Ben told Spidey also holds true in real life.
9. Personal Experience: Having worked for different types of companies over the years, vis., a startup, a FAANG and an established company, I can confidently say that one size does not fit all. The way things are done at X may not be suitable for Y, but it still helps X deliver a quality product to its users. It may even happen that we end up working at a company that’s different from what we dreamt for, yet it may offer things that we are looking for. Every organisation has their own pros and cons. Simply ask these questions to yourself:

• What does the hiring company offer and is it the same that I am looking for?
• What is it that I can offer to the company and what are they looking for in a candidate?
• Are the answers to the previous two questions compatible?

If you are content with all these answers, then the company is a good fit for you irrespective of whether it’s a tech giant, a cool startup or neither of the two.