In this post, I will be concluding my career search and how it turned out, including the factors that went into my decision for choosing my future career.
The Waiting Game
For me, one of the biggest challenges of the whole job application process was waiting. I tend to be overly pessimistic regarding my interview performance and I become very anxious waiting for the company response, sometimes wishing they would just put me out of my misery and reject me! It was a tough time. Some things that very helpful was remembering to be mindful and still find enjoyment with other aspects of my life – spending time with family and friends and doing active activities to expend the nervous energy like tennis and bouldering.
Something that I made sure to do was to keep recruiters informed very early of other deadlines and interviews that I was doing so that they would be able to expedite decisions if needed and understand if I needed to reach out later. In general, the recruiters I worked with were all very respectful about trying to get me a timely decision.
The Results!
For the sake of confidentiality, instead of writing down the exact organizations I received offers from, I will just give the general category that they fall under. Overall, I received offers from 2 FAANG/tech giants, 1 unicorn start-up pre-IPO, 1 unicorn startup post-IPO, 1 Big 4 consulting firm, 1 large healthcare organization/non-profit, and 1 established fintech giant. Every time I got an offer, I was so grateful and ecstatic! When I started the program 2 years ago, I had no idea that my world would be opened up to so many opportunities. Throughout the program, I was very guarded regarding my optimism of what my job search was like and I felt I’d be extremely lucky to get even one software developer role — and understood it might take several months of searching even post-graduation in order to find a role. I never would have dreamed of being able to choose between multiple options that I was really excited about. I also believe the job market at this time for software developers is currently very hot, and feel blessed that I’m able to kick off my SWE career in these market conditions.
It took a lot for me preparing and undergoing the interviews and waiting to hear back — but I was about to find out the hardest part is deciding what offer to take! Being naturally very indecisive and my passion for all the roles I was lucky to receive left me (and my poor husband!) in a very difficult deliberation process.
Decision Factors
These are the main factors that I used to help me decide where I wanted to start off my career. I hope this can help others in the same place make a decision they can feel comfortable with. Ultimately, I do worry about FOMO and regret with committing to anything but I know that all we can do is our best and to look forward and not back.
- Growth opportunities – I think ultimately the main thing I was looking to get out of my first job is a place where I can explore, take ownership, and contribute largely to products in the organization. There is a balance between scope of impact in larger organizations where I may be working on a product that millions use but only doing bug fixes. On the opposing side, in smaller companies, opportunities for growth and ownership of new features is a lot more prevalent, while the scale may be smaller.
- Interesting work – I wanted to work on products that I find cool. This is part of what drove me to want to be a software developer – the possibility of contributing to my favorite apps!
- Culture – Company culture is a big deal for me as I feel like pressure can be a large detractor even from interesting work if there is a toxic or pressure-cooker setting. Some organizations offer amazing benefits in aspects such as remote work, 401k matching and PTO and these really spoke to me about how employee-focused they were.
Other factors that I weighed less heavily included:
- Total compensation – most jobs had a standard new grad package that were all fairly competitive (particularly compared to my current salary!) Given the investment that my family made into this program, I just wanted to make sure there were sufficient returns to payoff for them.
- Location – like I mentioned in my initial post, it has been important for me to stay close to my family and the flexibility to work remotely or be placed in a physical office in my current location weighed into my decision.
- Prestige – I definitely didn’t want this to be a deciding factor for me, but I did love being able to tell my parents about my offers in organizations they knew and respected 🙂
The Decision
After much struggle and backtracking, I decided to go with the large fintech post-IPO unicorn over my other options. Ultimately, I loved the team that I was placed in and I also felt compared to the tech giants, it would allow me a better place to grow and take ownership of the work I’d be doing. I really connected with my interviewers and the problems that they were solving and the benefits and TC were better than I had ever expected. They were established enough that they did have name recognition with family and friends and job security regarding the future of the organization.
I admit it was a struggle to turn down other organizations that were better known among the non-tech population or seemed like they would offer better work-life balance. However, I couldn’t imagine a better place for me to be starting off my career.
Thank you for following me through this journey of my job application process! It’s been wonderful to share the experiences that I went through. In the next posts, I plan to dive deeper into the course that initiated this blog — my senior capstone project and what I’m learning along the way!
