Stay at a middle-of-the-pack team or push to get into big tech?
I am at a legacy telecommunications company (one of the big 3). I currently work on relatively modern tech stack with SpringBoot, Java 21, and Angular 14. I have 2 years of experience as a professional developer and graduated this year.
At this stage of my career, my goal is to become as technically proficient as possible, so that I can have more money and options in the future.
My team consists of many developers that have been at this company their entire careers and that don't want to implement things like automated testing, or CI/CD pipelines. I fear this lack of enthusiasm for engineering growth will stunt my technical abilities, as I am the only one suggesting these kinds of upgrades.
We support an application with ~500,000 monthly users, but I have never had a discussion about building more "scalable" code. I rarely get any feedback on my PRs and our team doesn't have any clear guidance about great vs bad code.
My concern is whether getting better at this job in this role, while helpful to be promoted, may not be pushing me in the most "industry-standard" direction, leaving me behind my peers in technical ability. I worry that without team feedback and focus on "great code", then 3 years from now I am going to vastly under leveled compared to a developer with strong tech leads that have been giving code-reviews that entire span.
Would you recommend I focus on interviewing/job hunting to get into a MAANG company, so that I am surrounded by top-tier talent, or on staying put and using the techniques taught here to individually improve my abilities and our codebase? Or, perhaps there is another option you would recommend.
I would love to hear your thoughts, thanks!
Discussion
(5 comments)- 322 days agoSDE @ Amazon - www.anamazonsde.com
I would say you should look into the option to get into bigger companies, FAANG is not the only group to join, but definitely there are things to get there you would not get anywhere else in terms of scale and communications, also to use the fact that you are still early in your career.
On the other hand, you can also look into startup option, faster movement, great exposure to recent trends, yet a bit pressure more than average.
Getting to work with proper methods, learning automation, deployments, and better software engineering are things not everyone get exposed to early in their career.
- 1
20 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroAT&T is a legendary company which is also a tech company, but it is not a software company. So I am not surprised that the software engineering culture isn't trying to push the bounds of quality despite you having 500k active users (which is a lot) and supporting what I assume is a critical product (communication and internet are such a huge part of modern life). I had a very similar experience to what you're going through now when I was at PayPal (code review was an absolute joke there).
If you have been there for 1 year or more, I recommend looking outwards. While Big Tech is certainly a good option, there are other companies where you can learn a lot, more than you would at AT&T. Unicorn startups and new era IPOs (Airbnb, Uber) come to mind. If you want to index more on raw building and less on quality, an early-stage startup is also good - Just learning how to code ambitious features from scratch super fast is still quite valuable and almost certainly isn't something you can learn at AT&T.
Given that the holiday season is rapidly approaching, I would focus on rounding out the year by having fun and taking it easy since recruiting is mega dead during December. Start off 2025 by sending out a ton of applications and breaking out the interview prep. Here's a great course to get you started there, particularly with mindset: Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer
On top of that, I've been meaning to make a course about general career direction for a long, long time (when to leave your job, where to go as a junior, where to go as a senior). I'll work on this course after I finish up my 2nd side project course.
Oh yeah, do side projects if you're bored and have a lot of free time, similar to what I did at PayPal hehe.
- 119 days agoJunior Software Engineer [OP]AT&T
I love that first line “ AT&T is a legendary company which is also a tech company, but it is not a software company“. We have a lot of technology, but we are not a software-first organization,
I’ll hit one year here July 2025. You and Rahul seem to both agree that getting into a software-focused company will be much more beneficial to me. I am currently in Dallas so I’ll start my search in Austin.
As far as next steps, how does this sound?
- Starting now, go through your interview course and begin practicing my leetcode (30ish minutes a day)
- Begin sending out applications April 2025 (3 months before I hit 1 year)
- July-August 2025 start at a new job at a software first company. Likely as a regular developer, but with a pay bump from my current tc.
- 119 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
Your plan seems great, go for it! Personally, I would wait until February/March to start really getting into LeetCode as the knowledge decays pretty fast in your brain due to DSA being this weird thing that engineers don't actually use in real life.
I think what you can do in December/January when hiring is slow is to watch that master job searching course (to establish mindset) and then take the resume course to polish your resume. In your spare time, tinker on some side projects. Of course, enjoy the holidays as well!
- 120 days agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
How long have you been at AT&T? Once you hit the 1 year mark, I would strongly suggest you aggressively job hunt to get into a different company. It could be MAANG, but you could also consider reputable new-age cos like Stripe, Uber, Pinterest, etc.
After reading the concerns, AT&T will not provide the growth you're looking for.
