Hey guys,

So I have to bag an internship this summer. I have tons of interviews and lots of offers, but do I go for the big companies, or the small ones.

What affected your career path more?

I already had 1 internship at the Canadian Space Agency, and so lots of big companies (Bombardier, CAE, Lockeed Martin, etc) are looking to hire me.
However, there are the small companies who want me too.


Can anyone give me advice?

/e I don't give a single fuck about salaries.

This post was edited by IsraeliSoldier on Jan 31 2013 09:44pm

why not just do what sounds fun/interesting?

I did Web Development at the CSA, so most of these positions are web related - or very similar , sadly.

you dont like web development?

my advice is to pick the position that will give you the strongest resume when you leave, regardless of salary. if you can get a job somewhere like facebook, google, amazon, microsoft, etc (or their canadian equivalents), then go there for your first job. otherwise, 5-10 years down the road they wouldn't even be interested in you unless you have a super-strong resume and you'll regret it. if you're not that qualified, then go somewhere that will pay for a masters/phd and get that as quickly as you can. then go out and have fun while you're still single. startups are risky, but they can be very enjoyable, so i would only go there if you're single.

Those big companies are very hard to get into (Google had a posting in Montreal and received 5000 applications in 5 days!!!)

Thanks for your input

Bigger companies usually have you do less work and are more forgiving if you don't know as much.
Smaller companies expect you to know and do everything.

For a starting career/internship, I recommend bigger companies for less stress.
This obviously isn't always the case, but generally is.

In the end, you should really base your decision on who you will work with and what you will be working on.
If you don't like what you're doing and hate your coworkers it's going to be shitty no matter where you're working.

This post was edited by DirtyRasa on Feb 1 2013 09:31am

Something to take into consideration is that many of the "big ones" pay their interns more than what you would make full-time at smaller companies (in the US , 4-6k per month).

among my friends, half of us went to big companies and the other half went to work at startups. among those, half of us who went to the big companies ended up quitting to go work at a startup.

there are some good reasons to work at big companies (e.g. you're not that hardworking/ambitious and care more about pursuing interests outside of career; you require job stability) and there are some great reasons to work at a startup -- particularly when you're fresh out of college.

paul graham writes some great essays related to startups and why you should do it -- worth a read:
http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html

This post was edited by irimi on Feb 4 2013 01:08pm