u/haj289 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Right on, you are everywhere on here! I can see that you really care. Is that your full name? I can add you on LinkedIn later once I do become a junior dev if you don't mind. I have a few more questions for you: 1) What do you mean by the right jobs? The company's culture of
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Yeah I'm also everywhere at Formation too, I just have no life :P
I worked at Facebook for 8 years and saw a lot of fake news stuff and I believe in transparency and empowering people to have the information needed to judge their sources, so I use my real name yeah. Same name on LinkedIn :D
1. It's unique to you. So like for some/most people a $100K apprenticeship at Dropbox is better than a $130K job at a marketing agency. If you are coming in at zero, don't pretend you are at a mid or senior level. Be the best darn junior engineer you can be and in the right environment you will accelerate your skills quickly and in a supported way. I always want people to ideally align the role with their passions. If you love gaming, try working at your favorite gaming company. If you love photography, maybe on Google Photos, or Pinterest. It will help make your work more fulfilling and your intuition will give you a leg up.
2. Startups are if they pass "the test". A lot of startups are not and might do more harm than good. "I was the only frontend engineer and had no idea if my code was good", "They told me to build the release process so I googled a lot and hope I did a good job", "I never had any code reviews!" all bad things. If a startup has 1. "top 10" investors, 2. has a lot of funding ($10M+ and ideally Series B or later), 3. has at least one technical co-founder/leader with 5+ years of legit FAANG experience. Then it's usually worth it.
3. So there are "bleeding edge" things that sound good, but it's like the wild west (VR, AR, autonomous driving, drones) and those are not necessarily the most exciting things to work on to me. I think web-based product continue to "eat" more traditional applications and companies like Figma and Notion are super interesting. A company that has an innovative product but is stable and building a sturdy team, with rocketship growth, is a winning formula for me!