Ask HN: As a fresh graduate, where should I go? Corporate or startup?

It is probably just me but I believe you should get into Corporate world at the beginning of your career because it will make you realize some of things that you don't want :). But on a more serious note, corporate world will give you exposure to a lot of things that startups may not. For example, when you work in corporate world, you will learn about red tape, bureaucracies etc that will teach you a lot. You will get to meet tons of people working for big companies and you can actually build a really good network.

In really big corporate companies, you will learn how different teams use different tools, methodologies and you may have to work directly/indirectly with many tools, processes etc. In startups, probably not so much specially when the team is really small. For example, I saw at least 10 different systems just for project management when in my corporate job and I probably would never be able to compare each if not that exposure. I hated it but that's the point. Now I know :)

I worked in the corporate world for 10+ years before I went into the bootstrapped product mode. My best achievement in the corporate world ? The extensive network of amazing people I met during those years. And of course, I learned tons about what NOT to do when you have the power of running your own company (no matter how small)

My advice is to explore all your options.

"Corporate" and "startup" are mostly meaningless in this context. When it comes to evaluating career opportunities, what matters are the specific details of particular job opportunities.

Bell Labs was corporate [1]. "Two idea guys who just need someone to write the code" is a startup.

Good luck.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs

I think a job at a large tech company would be my ideal first job. Having worked at both types of companies, I think the level of professionalism is higher at large corps, they know how to deal with junior level employees, the pay will be better, and so will job stability. Starting out at your first job involves a lot of social anxiety in a way, and I think it's easier to deal with the boring mega-corp socialization than the dorm-like atmosphere of a startup.

Having said that, it's important to work on projects that are impressive on your resume. Fixing bugs is fine, but 3 years of generating graphs for financial reports, or externalizing strings to internationalize an app will not help your career. Startups will definitely offer you challenging projects, but so can large corps, and often they'll let you take a bite you can more easily chew.

Edit to add: I think an important thing is to consider, will I enjoy working with these people and will I be able to satisfy their expectations? Especially make sure you and your boss will get along. This along with getting impressive projects are the most important things. But all else being equal, I'd prefer a large corp over startup for your first job.

1) All else being equal, I would go for a startup. But that's only if all else is equal. What I mean is that if you have offers from top companies, and offers from the hottest startups, you should prefer the startup. The name recognition will be the same (I'm pretty sure any tech recruiter will have heard of, say, Zenefits or something like that), so that's not really an issue. The pay profile will be different, but the best time to take risks is when you're young. Obviously if you can only get offers at mediocre startups you don't believe in, then you should prefer top-company offers.

2) If you don't already have a big name on your resume (through internships, for example), it may be helpful for your first job out of college to be at a brand-name company, if only for 1-2 years.

Corporate, it will buy you options by being in your resume. I am not advocating that this will make you rich or happy.

A big plus is understanding corporate culture, as it permeates everywhere with it's long reaching tentacles.

I am not saying this is your future, just an extra "certificate" of sorts. Plus corporate is like a club, once you join it, moving to other corps is a lot easier. In my experience at least.

Depends on which specific opportunity you can grow faster toward your long term goal. Usually people grow best when they are surrounded by excellent people and be given suitable challenges. You don't know these well until you interview and learned about what you are supposed to do and who you are going to work with. Learning a lot is much more important than get prestige on resume.

BTW, to be honest, it's harder to get into a good early stage startup than get a job at a corporate. Different requirements on how much you have learned and how fast you can learn.

I've been working in both startups and large multinationals and I'd say, you should go to startup first. It will give you sense of the freedom, that will stay for the rest of your life. It's important, because some independency is necessary to build successful career. Then go to a big corp to get REAL experience. There you'll improve your soft skills, build good network, learn about processes and tools, that you might never heard of in startups, and that will help you in future to scale your code and your future teams. Try both approaches, never choose single path, and eventually you will know what you want to do.