Very hard to generalize. Depending on your abilities, your credentials (what school, what impressive outside projects), and your priorities (give your life to make a small improvement to huge products vs build new interesting stuff vs make enough to live on with time to enjoy hobbies vs. many other dimensions), you should either:
not worry too much about it—interview at 3-5 places and take the one that sounds like you’ll have most fun or learn the most.
aggressively pursue your passion. If you’re into gaming, prove yourself to one of the studios (possibly by working elsewhere and building a portfolio). If you’re into deep learning, all the big tech companies and a number of startups are good choices. Same for almost any other topic.
Follow the money. Move to a big city and find the places with good stock plans. Live as cheap as possible and you can likely save 50% or more of your income.
The vast majority of software engineers change jobs every 3-5 years. At larger companies, that can be an internal transfer, but if money is an object, you’re likely to get raises/promotions faster if you change companies. This means that your first few companies don’t determine your life, and you shouldn’t overindex on making the perfect choice. However, it also means that you’re going to be continuously making this choice and asking these questions, rather than asking it here once and being done.
Very hard to generalize. Depending on your abilities, your credentials (what school, what impressive outside projects), and your priorities (give your life to make a small improvement to huge products vs build new interesting stuff vs make enough to live on with time to enjoy hobbies vs. many other dimensions), you should either:
not worry too much about it—interview at 3-5 places and take the one that sounds like you’ll have most fun or learn the most.
aggressively pursue your passion. If you’re into gaming, prove yourself to one of the studios (possibly by working elsewhere and building a portfolio). If you’re into deep learning, all the big tech companies and a number of startups are good choices. Same for almost any other topic.
Follow the money. Move to a big city and find the places with good stock plans. Live as cheap as possible and you can likely save 50% or more of your income.
The vast majority of software engineers change jobs every 3-5 years. At larger companies, that can be an internal transfer, but if money is an object, you’re likely to get raises/promotions faster if you change companies. This means that your first few companies don’t determine your life, and you shouldn’t overindex on making the perfect choice. However, it also means that you’re going to be continuously making this choice and asking these questions, rather than asking it here once and being done.