Best tech company to work for in 2019 is — as always — illusive

When you apply and nail the interview, you often ponder over whether this is the right opportunity. Sources like Glassdoor announce best tech companies to work for every year. The real answer is much more elusive than a developer might think.

Over time, software companies have evolved at much faster rate than their other industry counterparts. This is for obvious reasons because they are often the first beneficiaries of IT infrastructure — Cloud + Internet. Inferring from trends, it is quite easy to classify your prospective software employer into 3 distinct generations. Are you working for a 3rd generation software company?

What is 1st Generation software company?

They often fail to make it to the list of best tech companies to work for, because tech companies have evolved — much better than other industries in terms of career development. But they are still around.

They flout leaders that boast their success from industrial era corporations. They flourished during an era that almost coincides with the time of IBM dominance — and also of Apple, Microsoft, Oracle up to some extent. These companies took pride in their processes. More importantly — these processes were directed at regulating employees — and often lacked what was really required to make software product. The greatness of their products were simply result of few rockstar devs rather than entire teams.

Symptoms:

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

What defines a 2nd Generation software company?

Precisely, they are Google Generation companies because Google changed a lot about how a software company should function to be more efficient, if not effective. In fact, companies that were born in this era spawned discussions about best tech companies to work for.

Eat this: Despite primarily being an advertising company, in its early days, Google provided much more info than they gathered from users, which was close to almost nothing.

Due to its leanings on content-relevance, it fueled growth of startups with little advertising money compared to other options available at that time. At the same time, it also became an instrument in discovery of communities that held meaningful conversations — Reddit (2005), Stackoverflow (2008) and Github (2010).

These communities built yet another layer of ultra-modern software tech firms. Since Internet was their birthplace, and since Internet meant democratization of information, these firms reciprocated by liberating their employees from clutches of 1st generation mindset.

Let’s sum up their symptoms:

What defines a 3rd Generation software company?

Companies like Google who transformed the way people work often saw shortcomings in 2nd Generation companies, and began devising ways quite early in their life cycle to alter how tech employees are treated. As a result, we have 3rd Generation software companies — they exist not by names but by culture they exhibit.

Symptoms:

So where is the catch?

Conclusion:

Your best company to work for lies somewhere in the intersections

If you start plotting companies on this wen diagram, you will notice that most of the best companies to work for will fall in intersecting areas that coincides with your own developer persona — that is what makes the whole thing human — you can’t classify them perfectly — not always.

Aim of software is to help humanity, not replace it. My best bet is neither 2nd nor 3rd gen software firm, but something in-between: A Third gen software company that offer freedom for innovation, but just enough automation to retain touch with humans; without it, I can never aim to understand software products better.

All said and done: there exist programmers dissatisfied with their roles at Google too — a lot of them are. “Best tech company to work for” is not some general stats that you read before going for interview, but your personal choice.

Originally published at tipsnguts.com on March 23, 2019.