Work where you will be the dumbest person in the room.
In order to become great, it will really speed things up if you learn from great people. A great team can be anywhere, startup or large company. But, it is very difficult to estimate the quality of the team just from interviewing - especially as a fresh graduate.
Regrettably, chances are you are more likely to find a great team at companies such as Google than in a startup or a medium sized company. This is simply because startups find it much harder to recruit candidates, especially in early stages. So you are risking less going to Google or Microsoft.
With that said, if you find yourself agile enough to switch jobs quickly if things aren't the way you expected. Or if you have other information (such as friend's recommendation), going the riskier route may be more rewarding.
> Work where you will be the dumbest person in the room.
probably the best advice you could give!
-
my biggest regret from when i started out was not working somewhere were i was the dumbest person in the room. i started somewhere where i was the _only_ person in the room. i basically had to teach myself everything as i went. although there are some pros to this, e.g. i really "learned how to learn", in the end i wish i had been in an environment where i could have been constantly learning from the experience and knowledge of others. the learning curve is _a lot_ less steep in that case.
I think this is true. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find such a team yet. Of course it would be nice to believe, that I'm quite talented. But really, I think, it just shows, that it is very hard, to find a team that is stellar in the things that you find the most interesting.
Or, maybe, I just have a weird taste...
Would be interesting if somebody has been successful in finding such a team for him. Sounds like you, tomerico, found one after you graduated, no?
In big companies, talented people leave programming to do architecture and project lead - you're likely to find these guys in teams that are bound to executives and senior managers.
If you work for a big comp, get a clear idea of what role you want to have: support? IT? development? tech consulting? From there try to find single persons that do well, they probably have interesting connections.
Thanks for the advice! I'm actually a Mechanical Engineer and have mostly worked for R&D so far. Also, me and most people in robotics spend most of their time programing, they are not trained programmers. Unfortunately many use this as an excuse to keep writing crappy code instead of trying to catch up with the state of the art. Heck, right now I'm the only one in my group who uses version control ...
I think maybe most ignorant person in the room would be a better description in most cases.
If you were the dumbest person in the room there would be little chance for you to close the gap. They would be light years ahead and pulling out, instead of you catching up.
In order to become great, it will really speed things up if you learn from great people. A great team can be anywhere, startup or large company. But, it is very difficult to estimate the quality of the team just from interviewing - especially as a fresh graduate.
Regrettably, chances are you are more likely to find a great team at companies such as Google than in a startup or a medium sized company. This is simply because startups find it much harder to recruit candidates, especially in early stages. So you are risking less going to Google or Microsoft.
With that said, if you find yourself agile enough to switch jobs quickly if things aren't the way you expected. Or if you have other information (such as friend's recommendation), going the riskier route may be more rewarding.