
Ask HN: Should my goal as a programmer be to work at Google? - kenkaniff
It seems that a lot of young programmers make it their main goal to work at Google, Facebook, Microsoft or other tech giants. While I can certainly see the benefits of working at such a company (scale, upskilling, networking, resume item, etc.), the likelihood of getting a job at these companies is obviously very low and I think I might be better off by setting more realistic goals.<p>A lot of people tell me &quot;make your goals whatever you want, don&#x27;t let society influence you&quot;, but I feel like I&#x27;m not living up to my full potential by not having that goal.<p>How can I justify to myself that not having the goal of working at a tech giant is okay?
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finnthehuman
Why do you think that you won't live up to your potential anywhere but a
megacorp?

That's probably exactly backwards. Their external images is one of geniuses,
but is just a marketing projection built on how much can be accomplished with
huge numbers of work-a-day people cranking away.

When you get hired into that sea (especially as a fresh grad/young person),
the system is designed to minimize the harm your untested and untrusted self
can do. You'll be allowed to function at a competent level with the
possibility to shine in all the predefined ways the system allows, and none of
the ways it doesn't. I say "system" because the output of the bureaucracy,
company policies and internal politics never lines up with how management
thinks their company works. It's not (necessarily) malicious, but believing
something is different from understanding it's feasibility or the actions that
would be necessary to make it true.

A smaller company will have much more apparent ways to provide value to the
company, and to grow your skillset into something even more valuable to them.
Everything that needs to get done isn't already being done 100x better than
you could by the department of doing that-thing. If you can sit down and get
it done, that's way more of a personal accomplishment and job growth potential
than if you were one of 10 people in the that-thing department at a megacorp.

What working outside the giants (specifically the giants that brag on
themselves all the time) lacks is exposure. At Google someone can make a
minor, not-that-genius, change to a product and immediately impact a non-
trivial percentage of internet traffic, or put something into billions of
people's faces. They can get go around smugly telling others how big of an
impact they make to the world. But that's confusing their accomplishment with
something google did without them, it's not "living up to potential" it's
being a hanger-on.

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jwu910
You can be just a number at a tech giant. Sometimes there is more
gratification working with more intimate teams and be able to make an impact

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jaxn
Smaller companies let you work with a wider range of technologies / problems.
You wear more hats, so to speak.

