Ask HN: What are the most impressive companies for new grads to join today?

If you're joining a company because it's prestigious and looks good on a resume, instead of because you see the opportunity to do good work and learn from people better than you, you aren't a hacker--you're just some wannabe seeking affirmation.

Honestly that's going to depend on the engineer. I never considered Uber or Palantir prestigious, and I have never heard of Affirm or Blend. That doesn't mean I'm right to think such -- with Palantir I'm biased for political reasons, and with Uber, I was also likely wrong not to think so, now that I think about it.

Well, I never heard of Affirm as a tech company to work at, but now I thank you're talking about the company offering loans at high interest rates for people buying stuff they can't afford. I'm not sure what's so prestigious about a humdrum finance company.

Amazon and Microsoft, everybody has heard of, and at least they require people with a pulse. They know how to ship good software, and they got real shiznit going down, and that counts for a lot. Depends on your role.

High hiring bar + works on cool stuff + high salary + company visibility is the general formula here.

Hard to go wrong picking any FAANGs or the big unicorns of the day. I’d recommend it over joining a startup, you’ll learn good engineering practices. I started my career in startups out of college and I remember being the one always feeling things were done way too sloppily (poor testing, hideous build systems, code duplication, ... all in the name of speed), and in hindsight I was absolutely right. You don’t want to be in that position.

Pick the one that's the best fit for you.

I picked a job a few years back based on "it'll look good on my CV" -- turned out to be the worst decision I ever made. That's not to say every job will end as badly as that did, but I realised quite early on that I just wasn't a good fit for the company, and they wanted a "yes-man" to say "you're doing everything right", not an engineer who'd say "this is good, but we can improve by..."

Picked my last job based on the number of people I had at the company, the offer and the general "vibe". Best decision I ever made.

Don't be afraid to interview at a couple of companies then choose between them. Don't pick solely on "this is the highest offer" -- pick somewhere that feels like it'll be good for you.

And don't worry about prestige. About the only thing that'll put employers off are long gaps in your work history that you can't explain. But that's not a problem you're likely to have with a grad position :)

90% of your happiness will be based on your manager/team, 10% on the rest of it. It helps to also enjoy the domain the company is working in. Try to figure out the stress level of the organization as well, particularly on the team you will join. Also get a sense that your manager will value your contributions.