As a fresh software grad, here's what nobody tells you: your first job will shape your entire career trajectory. Not because of the company name on your resume. But because of what you learn to value. What you learn to tolerate. What you learn to expect from your work.
Your first few years are when you build that foundation. Or don't. Choose carefully.
Avoid Services Companies
Services companies will kill your creativity. They tell you what to build. They give you specs. You ship. You move to the next ticket. You never see the customer. You never understand the business. You never know if your code worked.
After two years, you can write CRUD apps in your sleep. But you can't think. You can't reason about product. You can't make decisions. You've become a code typist. Not an engineer. The danger isn't that you're bored. The danger is that you forget how to think. You become dependent on someone else telling you what to do. You lose the muscle for independent thought. That's career suicide.
Find Product Companies
Product companies force you to think. You sit next to product managers. You talk to designers. You see customer feedback. You watch metrics. You understand why you're building what you're building. You see the impact. You feel the consequences of bad decisions. This is where you learn.
You learn that perfect code doesn't matter if the feature flops. You learn that shipping fast beats shipping perfect. You learn that customers don't care about your tech stack. Most importantly, you learn to connect code to outcomes. That's the difference between a developer who costs money and an engineer who makes money.
Join Early-Stage Startups
Early-stage startups are where you learn the art of building. You will make mistakes. You will ship bugs. You will build features nobody uses. You will waste weeks on the wrong architecture. That's the point. You learn what matters by doing everything wrong first. You learn to pivot fast. You learn to ship with 70% confidence. You learn to read customer signals. In a big company, you specialize. You become the React expert. The database guru. The infra person.
In a startup, you do everything. Frontend. Backend. DevOps. Customer support. Sales demos. You become a complete engineer. You understand systems. You understand trade-offs. You understand business.
That's worth more than any salary difference.
The Action Is Where the Learning Is
Your career isn't about writing code. It's about building judgment. Judgment comes from seeing the full loop. From idea to code to customer to revenue.
Services companies hide the loop. Product companies show you the loop. Startups make you run the loop. Get as close to the action as possible. Sit in customer calls. Read support tickets. Look at revenue numbers. The engineers who become founders, CTOs, and leaders aren't the best coders. They're the ones who understand the business.
Why This Matters Now
AI is changing everything. The value of pure coding skill is dropping. AI can write code. What it can't do is decide what to build. That's your edge. Your judgment. Your product sense. Your understanding of customers. Services companies won't teach you that. They'll teach you to be a slightly better code typist than AI. Startups will teach you to be irreplaceable.
What to Do
If you're in a services company, Think. Now. The longer you stay, the harder it becomes.
If you're in a big product company, find a way to get closer to the action. Volunteer for projects that touch customers. Join a smaller team.
If you have the stomach for it, join an early-stage startup. Accept the chaos. Embrace the learning.
Your future self will thank you.
The engineers who thrive in the AI era won't be the best coders. They'll be the ones who know what to build. You learn that by being where the action is.