Ask HN: Should you carefully choose the first company you work at?

3 points by rochak 9y ago ↗ HN

I'm from a place where a lot of attention is paid to the first company you worked at. If at all that company is among one of the best, it becomes easier to get into other good companies irrespective of the quality of the work done in that company. For example, looking at stats from paysa.com, one can readily identify that a good percentage of people that are newly hired by a company come from a specific set of other companies. I think this to be true only for the case of the Big 5. What is your take on this?

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brudgers 9y ago ↗

There are two sides to the problem. Some choices are better than others but a person at the start of their career lacks the experience to make a highly informed decision by definition. For example, using pay stats even if accurate does not measure job satisfaction or skill development and a third party's data is likely to be inaccurate.

To put it another way, the people who go to work at one of the "Big 5" companies and stay for a few years are more likely to be happy working for another one of them in a few years than someone who as a new graduate decides that the "Big 5" are not what they want.