How to choose between 2 software dev jobs?

Posted by FriedRicePork@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 3 comments

Hey,

I am a software developer with 3 YoE.

I interviewed to a bunch of companies recently and successfully got to the contract part with 2 companies.

I need to make a decision on which company to sign the contract with and idk what to choose.

Quite big American public company (over 12,000 employees). The company is a non-tech company, their main activity is in the home construction field. They recently opened a small R&D department and the goal is to develop internal web products in order to utilize and optimize the work in other fields (like home design and planning system). Main tech stack: React + Node.js and the product is quite new (\~1 year).
Small local tech company (maybe 25 employees) that develop a system for cashiers and self checkout systems. Their systems are in production, they have enoguh customers and they are financially stable. Main tech stack: Vue.js + Ruby on Rails and the products is \~10 years old.

My main concerns are:

I think the big American company looks better for the future resume (I am not in / from the US), and their offer is a little bit better in terms of benefits and contract. It looks like they have more budget. The product they develop is an internal tool, thus it will have a small number of customers, no on-call shifts. Should the fact that it's a non-tech company be a "red flag" for the future resume? Also, what about the fact the the tools developed will be internal and without a lot of customers, should it affect my experience or my reputation? Altough the department is backed by the budget of the company from the US, they can close it or move it to a cheaper country (like happend not once in this shitty market time) in a short notice.

In the other hand, the small company is based on tech, it's a pure tech company, not utilizing tech in order to optimize. The daily work will be involved with a lot of customers, bugs and errors, on calls etc, which can be good for the experience and bad as well (depends). The contract itself is not as good as the other, the location is not as good as well.

Please help me decide or give me some insights or tips on how you would choose as both options interest me.

Overall, I am glad to have 2 options in hand in such a shitty market.

Thanks :)

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Beginning-Comedian-2@reddit

My advice: 100% the big company with the internal tool.

Working on an internal tool is a SWEET gig.
My previous role was at a big company doing exactly that.
The nice thing is it's an R&D department so even if the tool(s) fails, the parent company likely won't be mad.
It's better pay which is a bonus but not a dealbreaker.
Yes, you could be developing the tool and they move it to another country.
(This also happened to my whole department after 3 years.)
But there's no job security anywhere.
On the other hand, the small company sounds like it will help you work with large datasets which is always good on the resume.
And working on software used in self-checkout systems sounds like a stable business.
The biggest downside for me is there are only 25 people.
Small companies can be higher stress because at 25 people they tend to micromanage.
If you go to lunch for too long, they question it.
If you take a week vacation, they question it.
(Maybe that's just me... your milage may vary.)
TLDR: Work-life balance is probably better at the big company.

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FriedRicePork@reddit (OP)

First of all thanks for your reply, I appreciate it! Someone I know with 20 YoE also told me that internal tools are fun and more enjoyable from his experience. But wouldn't it be a disadvantage for future options the fact that I worked in a non-tech company? I mean let's take an extreme example - it's like working in the Coca Cola's / redbull R&D department, they are big, but fundamentally non-tech. Also I didn't mention, in both companies the dev teams are more or less equal in size (~6-7 people). I fear that the small company will be more beneficial for my experience with a larger scale system, but it has disadvantages as well, like stress and work life balance. I am sure I'll learn a lot in both places, I just don't know what's the right place for a kinda kid in the industry (3 YoE). I'm interested in the internal tool the big company develops, it seems complex, messing with 3D designs, but I am not sure where it will go in the future, it seems experimental, the department is really new and it might be advantage and disadvantage as well. Probably I have fomo both ways 😂

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BeenThere11@reddit

Noone cares which company you worked for if you have skills you need.