Thread: Job Opportunities for a 6-months placement

OK that is perfect, so you guys go and apply to those small companies and leave Google, Apple, Cisco, eBay etc to me. Because we all know that people who work there have boring jobs, and we all know that if we had the chance to work there we'd turn them down. Right.

Dude, we're just trying to impress upon you the fact that the name of the company you work for doesn't matter in the end, it's what you do and what you learn while doing it. Small companies often have just as good of salaries as bigger companies.

Last summer I was offered an internship at a relatively large company (about 5000 employees worldwide, but about 2500 employees at their main campus), but not near as large as some of the major players (Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.). After considering this internship, I also received a call from Apple saying that they had an internship spot available. I asked Apple what I'd be doing. They said some sort of jibberish that in the end I took to really mean "data entry". I was like, "um.....bye", and I went and worked for the other company and loved my internship there.

1. It the name of the company that counts in the end
2. The salary won't be competitive

Most companies have very competitive salaries, regardless of size, otherwise it'd be hard to hire good programmers who get the job done.

When you say that it's "the name of the company that counts", that worries me. You sound like an MBA student who's sole intent is on "networking" and "getting your name out there"....and as much as you do that it won't help you an ounce in life unless you got some good experience to back it up.

OK that is perfect, so you guys go and apply to those small companies and leave Google, Apple, Cisco, eBay etc to me. Because we all know that people who work there have boring jobs, and we all know that if we had the chance to work there we'd turn them down. Right.

Lol. That was precious. You are the cutest greenie.

You'd be surprised at the experience of many in here and the places they work on. You come here and after 4 posts already assume you know more than people that are working in the industry for more than 20 years.

All the best to you. Bye!

And yes, the name of the company counts a lot, cause if you have to choose between 2 applicants who both did good projects, you're gonna go with the one from the big company, cause you know that it was much harder for them to get accepted there. Everything else is nonsense.

Absolutely not. I would go with the one who impressed me more during the interview.

Case in point:

While a student at BYU, I worked for a department where we did some PHP web development. All of us programmers were students (since it was a university department, it was a great place for students to get work experience). One of our programmers left when he graduated, and so we had the opportunity to interview students who wanted the available programming job.

Many students applied. Some of them had beautiful resumes with internships in high places. Who did we choose for the job? We chose a freshman computer science student who had no outside internship experience, because he truly impressed us during his interview.

Originally Posted by Dush

This summer I've had my internship with a company that has 10,000+ employees [...] I was given 2 big projects to finish

Really? Are you sure? Like positively sure?
Sorry but I find that hard to believe. It's alright though; you can ignore me and my ways.

As for your initial question. If you know everything as you seem to do, why do you ask? Shouldn't you be an expert, or something like that, in big company job markets? Please don't waste our time with questions to which you know the answer already. No one here is going to be impressed with your antics. Although we do thank you for the trip down memory lane when we too were sweet fools.

Yeah. That's it. We've all been there. Don't fret.

Originally Posted by Dush

@Mario F: Em, do you think I signed up here cause I wanted to impress some strangers on the internet? Impress them with what? With the company i did a st**pid little internship?

Let's me try again because I feel tension in the air.

1st. Just to clear something here. No one is trying to convince you to go the way you don't want to. What however is being argued is your notion of what small companies are and what they can offer in the job market. You are totally and irrevocably wrong. And this comes from people that know well the market and have been in and around it for more than 2 decades. More importantly you are ignoring the arguments of people that actually have been making exactly this type of decisions for the past years. People that decide who does and who doesn't get accepted.

The least anyone would expect was for you -- in case, understandably, you don't want to listen to us -- to at least question your current belief and say something in the lines of "ok. I'm not so sure. But i'll keep that in mind." Because let me tell you, that attitude you reveal, if caught by an interviewer, will almost certainly mean you will not get the job no matter your resume and the shinny company names in there. Personally I already don't want you working for or with me.

As for your "2 big projects"... well, I guess you know where I'm headed. They weren't that big (because really you don't deliver big projects in big companies to just one person), and you weren't really expected to finish anything they haven't already (because you don't trust a company's business to an intern). It's ok though. Part of the fun is making the intern feel the pressure. It's part of the evaluation.

Originally Posted by Dush

The first one was to be used internally, so even if i screwed it up, clients wouldn't know. It was a project to make life easier for my team. (It's gonna be used by another department within the company).
Second one was client-facing, and it was gonna be used by _a lot_ of clients. I had to add functionality to a program they already have, but they couldn't decide on the new UI so in the end I had the back-end to work, but the front-end needed 1-2 more days of work, and a lot of testing.

You speak rubbish and sound as-if you haven't even started your internship.

Speaking of which, I would really like not to do my internship at Microsoft, IBM or Google. Since those sort of companies seem to take pleasure in taking your ideas and crushing your soul.

Well if I were interviewing you for an internship at our company and I picked up on this attitude in the slightest little bit the answer of my fellow co-workers and my answer would be a huge no. Quite plainly your attitude sucks and I wouldn't want you demoralizing the rest of the team with your arrogant assumptions that small companies are somehow worse than big companies. Remember that behind every 'giant' you see touted in tech news there are several groups of small supporting companies that assisted them with their products.

If you take this attitude with company selection what type of attitude do you take when programming? It seems that you have a 'my way' or the 'highway' type of attitude and that simply will not cut it on a development team. You also seem more concerned with looks and appearances than anything else. Maybe you should try to become a project manager instead of a developer.

Quite frankly you are arrogant and pretty much the exact type of person I would never want to work with. I find the ones who are the most arrogant and cocky about this or that are the worst programmers regardless of what they know.

Do yourself a favor and grow up a bit before you do anything. You are talking to many many people here who are already in the industry and who have dealt with or who used to be people just like you. Trust us when we tell you that your current mindset is not going to take you very far at all. For me attitude is just as much a determining factor in an interview as technical ability.

If you have already done an internship then what is this thread about? If you already know the answer then why did you ask us?

Originally Posted by Bubba

Well if I were interviewing you for an internship at our company and I picked up on this attitude in the slightest little bit the answer of my fellow co-workers and my answer would be a huge no.

Well, that might be why a small company is inappropriate for some people. Large companies are usually bound by certain laws, etc. whereby it will be difficult for them to have an across the board policy like "we don't hire women or black people, we frown on communists, etc", whereas with a small company it is possible to do this. That may seem like a lucky thing if you are a white guy, until you meet the rest of the white guy gang

By extrapolation, a large company can afford to not worry too much about an individual's attitudes about many things (as long as it does not affect their performance), and may even benefit from certain kinds of diversity. Ideally, I would like to think that small companies could provide greater individual freedoms to their employees, but in my real experience, this has not been true at all unless you "fit right in" -- which makes the whole idea that "freedom" is involved very very theoretical. Perhaps this is because smaller companies may be more easily consumed about growth and "fitting in" themselves, and so are more easily frightened by diversity because it could be a liability (no changes to the recipe please!).

Well, that might be why a small company is inappropriate for some people. Large companies are usually bound by certain laws, etc. whereby it will be difficult for them to have an across the board policy like "we don't hire women or black people, we frown on communists, etc", whereas with a small company it is possible to do this. That may seem like a lucky thing if you are a white guy, until you meet the rest of the white guy gang

That statement is ignorant. All companies are bound by those laws. But attitude and qualifications are not a protected category where as race, gender, religion, etc. are protected categories. If you take all measuring sticks away then you effectively have to hire everyone and I hope we never get there. To make reference to the fact that what I am doing is somehow illegal or inappropriate is offensive and uncalled for. I assure you that attitude is not a protected category in my area.

And I appreciate diversity as much as the next person but I also know that poor attitude is very hard to fix and hard to work with and can reduce production or completely demoralize a team. Diversity is absolutely necessary but troublesome employees are not. I would say that the company I work for has people from at least 10 different nations and it is very cool to be able to work with them.

By extrapolation, a large company can afford to not worry too much about an individual's attitudes about many things (as long as it does not affect their performance), ...

The attitude we are discussing here could reduce performance if carried into the job.

By extrapolation, a large company can afford to not worry too much about an individual's attitudes about many things (as long as it does not affect their performance), and may even benefit from certain kinds of diversity. Ideally, I would like to think that small companies could provide greater individual freedoms to their employees, but in my real experience, this has not been true at all unless you "fit right in" -- which makes the whole idea that "freedom" is involved very very theoretical. Perhaps this is because smaller companies may be more easily consumed about growth and "fitting in" themselves, and so are more easily frightened by diversity because it could be a liability (no changes to the recipe please!).

You do make some good points there. However my experience has been more diversified. I did enjoy many personal freedoms while working for small companies, down to the point of being able -- and encouraged! -- to use their resources to develop my personal projects (and retain ownership), provided that didn't interfere with the deadlines.

All in all, I'd think you can find a little of everything everywhere. Be it a small or big company. But the comparatively large numbers of small companies added to a smaller number of employees, provide better odds of finding a nice working environment where one can feel right at home.

Curiously my best experience ever was on a large company. But statistically that means little. Because in contrast I've had more good experiences in small companies than large ones.

One last thought though, probably much less congenial; I'm not a fan of happily married, multi-cultural, democratic working environments such as those found in large corporations. Tensions tend to amount. Human relationships, no matter our efforts, are eventually based in familiarity to ideas and to behaviors. There is also a certain loss of individuality... ugh, I'm not sure I can explain this. In any case, I always felt more at home in smaller companies where I can better adapt to the rules and behavior being that they are less diversified, and where I can also better have a feel for my individual contribution.

Originally Posted by Bubba

That statement is ignorant. All companies are bound by those laws.

Well, just to be factual, in the United States and Canada at least, many or most laws of this sort (eg, affirmative action) do not apply to small businesses, so the ignorance is all yours. Of course, you cannot put a sign up "we only hire white men", but if that is all you do, it won't matter. The upshot being at a large corporation, you are guaranteed a diversified environment; at a small one, you are not. I'm not arguing the rightness or wrongness of that, since I agree it is a bit much to look at a small business and say, okay, you have twenty people, we want 10 women, etc. That's no good.

But if you are someone who is more comfortable with diversity than homogeneity, then that could be a real consideration.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

Curiously my best experience ever was on a large company. But statistically that means little. Because in contrast I've had more good experiences in small companies than large ones.

Yeah, it's basically life experience that would lead me to take this position, since philosophically I am far more in favour of the small tight knit operation vs. the corporation. But I would have to lie to make this fit my reality. The best employer I ever had was a large pseudo co-op (eg, that had employees like me that did not have to buy a share) altho the job was boring.

I've had bad and good experiences at large and small companies, but ultimately I have to say the small ones seemed more prone to autocratic/absurd behaviour by management, perhaps because "the boss" really was the boss and didn't have to answer to anything, so his or her authority was totally arbitrary. A lot of small business managers are power trippers who could not hack being managed themselves in a corporate hierarchy. They don't want to have to obey rules, they want to make them for others. That is the dark side of the high-minded, over-idealized "entrepreneur" figure -- it's a mini chieftain!

If you are sufficiently oddball (which I probably am, and have been most of my life*), you can get hired by some small companies, and most large ones, but there are a lot of small ones where you are totally wasting your time -- those people will not hire you, period.

I'm not complaining about that, since I probably don't want to work there either, but I could empathize with a perspective vis, I do not want to bother with the in-house politics of small companies, period, because IMO even the "nice" ones are nothing special anyway, unless you want to wear those rosy glasses they make for you. That's business. Altho perhaps that is not where the OP is coming from.

* I will even put that down to something as banal and ridiculous as having long hair (as a man) and refusing to cut it.