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Where to start? (Career)

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  • 01-04-2010 11:49pm
    #1
    Seifer
    Registered Users Posts: 2,265 ✭✭✭


    Inspired by some of the very interesting points being made in this thread and motivated by the fact that I will have to make decisions soon:

    If you were coming out of college now with a computer science degree with good results and you had the opportunity of getting involved with small start ups where there is the potential to learn a lot from very experienced people OR getting a software development role in a multinational/medium sized business where you'll probably learn a lot too but probably not as much; which one would you do? And why?


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    #2
    onemorechance
    Registered Users Posts: 3,078 ✭✭✭onemorechance


    I think it's difficult to say with which you would learn more as I expect it would differ from each company, whether they are large or small. I think that one point I would be wary of is the standard of software engineering that they company uses. You should look for a company that engineers software to a quality standard by using process models etc. I think you could pick up bad habits and standards by going with a company that does not follow good quality standards.


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    #3
    Hellm0
    Registered Users Posts: 1,028 ✭✭✭Hellm0


    The above is certainly true, you should be aware of the processes in place in a company before deciding to work with them.

    That said, some of the best experience I have as a developer came about as a direct result of working with small companies. They expose you to a greater portion of the business as they cannot afford more experienced or senior devs. This gives you an opportunity to expand your skill-set before entering a larger company, where usually grads will be stuck debugging a real developers code.


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    #4
    Seifer
    Registered Users Posts: 2,265 ✭✭✭Seifer


    Thanks for the responses guys.
    Hellm0 wrote:
    That said, some of the best experience I have as a developer came about as a direct result of working with small companies. They expose you to a greater portion of the business as they cannot afford more experienced or senior devs.
    That's what has me leaning more towards that at the moment.

    On the point of processes; would you ask about that in an interview? What kinds of things should I look out for?


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    #5
    onemorechance
    Registered Users Posts: 3,078 ✭✭✭onemorechance


    When it comes to processes, they will probably ask you about it in the interview if they use them and if they are important to them.

    I just emphasise this as important as the lack of processes in software development is the (main) reason projects have such high failure rates.

    You might find it frustrating to work with code that has been created "on the fly" with no proper documentation, comments etc. I do anyway!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process

    EDIT: You can have my job if the above doesn't bother you!


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