Picking a place to intern: Google vs Microsoft vs Fog Creek

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6912844

by dlp211 • 13 years ago

2 3 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So with less then 24 hours until one of these offers expires, I can't make a decision. I already turned down one project at Google because I wasn't interested in it, so I am awaiting another team.

I would be a part of the OS group at Microsoft, but I don't know exactly what I will be working on.

And Fog Creek, is well, Fog Creek.

I already worked at another big name tech company as an intern this past summer, so I don't need the brand. I want what I do this summer to be able to stand on its own, no matter the name above it.

So if you were in my position, where would you go and why? If you interned at one of these places, what was your experience like?

wcarss• 13 years ago

You've asked us to give you advice not based on the brand, and yet, all you've really given us for information is the brands. "The OS group" at Microsoft is thousands of people and probably hundreds of projects, ranging from cool glorious shit with smart people to mundane drudgery.

I interned at Microsoft, and later Google. Google absolutely trumped Microsoft in my experience. I think of the atmospheric difference between them as similar to that between university and high school.

If your previous intern experience did not include free food: go to Google. I find it impossible to overstate the mental and material difference that removing any thought of groceries made to my life. It was huge. Unlimited, healthy, and varied. The people at Google were wonderful and the level of support available to you for personal and career growth is immense.

You do need to get a good team, but if you've been accepted by more than one already, your recruiter will have high confidence in placing you and probably be helpful in finding the best fit. They are strongly motivated to get you hired.

Microsoft was not an interesting place to work. I met two or three insanely smart people there who joined years ago when Microsoft was more like Google is now (or, was, a few years ago), and they were all swamped and cramped and not in a position to be good mentors.

I don't know anything about what working at Fog Creek would be like. Trello is nice. Joel Spolsky's old blog posts are pretty good reading. Does that make it a good place to work?

Are you a *nix or a Mac or a Windows person? Even if not for your daily use, what about for your programming environment? What technology do you want to work with in the future?

At Microsoft, you'll probably be writing C# or C++ in Visual Studio on Windows. At Google, you'll be writing C++, Java, Python, or Go, in vim/emacs/sublime, on a Mac or on Ubuntu. I'd imagine Fog Creek would be JS/C#/C++ in Visual Studio in Windows, but I really don't know.

The offer probably won't expire, by the way. People don't invest money and time interviewing and vetting you and then seriously put a pointless clock on it. If they do seriously mean it: don't work there. That level of bullshit should signal a lot of bad HR experiences down the road.

grain of salt, your mileage may vary, all that. Good luck.

dlp211• 13 years ago

I know it wasn't much info, but it's literally all I have. I have the offer letters too, but they are all about the same.

As far as platforms go, it doesn't matter to me, Mac, *Nix, Windows, I use them all, and I am fairly language agnostic, but C and Java are my goto's. I'm a really big algorithm and data structures guy. I'm big on implementing them, understanding them, and making them run faster, but other then that, I am interested in OS, compilers, and languages.

Anyway, thanks for the insight, that's what I was really trying to get out of this post, what other people's experiences.

blinkymach12• 13 years ago

Hi dlp211,

My name is Jude and I'm one of the developers at Fog Creek Software. I'm obviously a bit biased, but I'd be happy to talk to you if you have any questions about Fog Creek. Feel free to ping me at jude@fogcreek.com if you're interested.

I was an intern at Fog Creek 5 years ago, and at the time I was also choosing between Microsoft, Google, and FC. At my final interview at each of Microsoft and FC, I asked each person (at Microsoft, the head of the Windows Live team; at FC, Joel) to tell me about why I should work with them instead of my other options.

I came away deciding that they'd both be great places to work. I ended up choosing Fog Creek because of a few aspects which were more appealing to me. The biggest lure to me was that Fog Creek was (at ~15 people) and still is (at ~50 people) a small company. It meant that I'd get to see more of how a software company functions. It meant that I could get involved with more of the steps of shipping a software product, and I could have my feedback and actions directly impact the products I worked on.

Those were some of my draws. Plus, it's an internship... it felt to me like a great opportunity to explore NYC without committing myself to it for years. I felt confident that Google and Microsoft would be largely unchanged if I waited a year, but I felt like Fog Creek was a little different. I still think it is.

Whoever you choose, it sounds like you've got some great options. I'm sorry you've got an exploding offer to deal with. If you're still undecided, keep in mind that the recruiter will likely extend the window if you ask them to -- the deadline is forced so that you'll be more likely to choose them, not because they're actually trying to cut you off ;-)

Best of luck, - Jude

Picking a place to intern: Google vs Microsoft vs Fog Creek

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