8 ms·

Ask HN: Which companies are considered to have the best engineers in 2017?

sidcool 9y ago
In my opinion, Google and Apple.
Madmallard 9y ago
blizzard valve bethesda are probably really high up there the smartest guy i knew at university went to work at blizzard he just made everyone around him look bad
- kohanz 9y ago
  > he just made everyone around him look bad An example of why this is so subjective. For me, the "best" engineers make everyone around them look better. Like the star athlete that elevates the level of play of their teammates. One of my best friends in university was top-ranked in our class for every year (although they discontinued the rankings shortly after my class finished). Just a brilliant mind but without any of the social awkwardness you might expect to accompany that. He would literally hold unofficial study tutorials where he taught other students the course material. And it's not like he did this because he thought he was awesome - the other students begged him to because he could explain concepts better than some of our own profs.
- Sindrome 9y ago
  I've looked @ Blizzard jobs and they pay remarkably low. They consider it a privilege to work there. Supposedly it gets better after 3-5 years of proving yourself. Just seems like your typical enterprise position.
ravitation 9y ago
Google is certainly one company that's traditionally had that reputation.
drewrv 9y ago
I imagine this depends on how you define "best". The most impressive/challenging work right now is probably in AR or self driving cars. If "best" is based on code quality or productivity, well, that's kind of subjective.
- stouset 9y ago
  The most glamorous right now might be AR and self-driving, but most challenging I think undersells the difficultly of problems distributed across virtually all of software engineering.
Axsuul 9y ago
There are no "best engineers". There can be, however, a "best engineer" for the specific stage the company is at. The typical higher echelon engineer that you'll find at the Big 4 will not necessary thrive at a early-stage startup.
bsvalley 9y ago
I hear terms like "developers", "coders", "resources" and all these kind of stuff when companies talk about us. So I don't think any company has brillant "engineers" per se. They maybe have excellent algorithm solvers on a whiteboard. Google, Facebook, etc.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
PhrosTT 9y ago
My person & abritrary list of companies I consider to be 'above' the Big 4: Stripe Two Sigma SpaceX Maybe AirBnb & Netflix?
harrisreynolds 9y ago
FYI. Big Four = Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft I'd guess Stripe, Palantir and AirBnB would be up there too.
- JBReefer 9y ago
  People are downvoting you for including Palantir, which has a reputation of over-inflating the quality of its engineers, and consistently choosing big name schools over experience. I don't know if it's true, when I interviewed with them they seemed very interested even though I only took 3/4 years of a cs degree, and graduated with a different degree from RPI. I'm just explaining their reputation.
harrisreynolds 9y ago
Joel Spolsky always seemed to have an aptitude for attracting great people to Fog Creek Software. See joelonsoftware.com for a treasure trove of knowledge if you somehow have never heard of him.
j7ake 9y ago
The best engineers are probably working in academia doing research.
- herickson123 9y ago
  I generally think of these folks as scientists and engineers doing work in the real world.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nitwit005 9y ago
  I doubt even the academics would agree with that one.
maxxxxx 9y ago
I think a better question would be which company has the best environment for engineering? I see a lot of smart people with a lot of potential working on crap projects.
devonkim 9y ago
To be contrarian, I'll point toward financial engineering (not retail or I-banking and such) such as Renaissance. It takes some pretty crazy and smart people to dig into FPGAs and HDLs trying to write what would normally be CPU based algorithms while focusing upon latency and availability as well when so many dollars are in motion. The industry's secrecy habits make it hard to get a fair assessment, but I've never heard of anyone incompetent at such a place while I've heard gobs of stories of incompetent people at large tech companies.
- SirLJ 9y ago
  Plus they much much better compensated compare to the typical Silicon Valley company
rl3 9y ago
My vote is Epic Games. If you look at UE4 changelogs, the amount of productivity is staggering. Core engine programming is no joke either, let alone on a commercial engine used by half the industry.

In my opinion, Google and Apple.

blizzard valve bethesda are probably really high up there the smartest guy i knew at university went to work at blizzard he just made everyone around him look bad

kohanz 9y ago
> he just made everyone around him look bad An example of why this is so subjective. For me, the "best" engineers make everyone around them look better. Like the star athlete that elevates the level of play of their teammates. One of my best friends in university was top-ranked in our class for every year (although they discontinued the rankings shortly after my class finished). Just a brilliant mind but without any of the social awkwardness you might expect to accompany that. He would literally hold unofficial study tutorials where he taught other students the course material. And it's not like he did this because he thought he was awesome - the other students begged him to because he could explain concepts better than some of our own profs.
Sindrome 9y ago
I've looked @ Blizzard jobs and they pay remarkably low. They consider it a privilege to work there. Supposedly it gets better after 3-5 years of proving yourself. Just seems like your typical enterprise position.

ravitation 9y ago

Google is certainly one company that's traditionally had that reputation.

drewrv 9y ago

I imagine this depends on how you define "best". The most impressive/challenging work right now is probably in AR or self driving cars. If "best" is based on code quality or productivity, well, that's kind of subjective.

stouset 9y ago
The most glamorous right now might be AR and self-driving, but most challenging I think undersells the difficultly of problems distributed across virtually all of software engineering.

Axsuul 9y ago

There are no "best engineers". There can be, however, a "best engineer" for the specific stage the company is at. The typical higher echelon engineer that you'll find at the Big 4 will not necessary thrive at a early-stage startup.

bsvalley 9y ago

I hear terms like "developers", "coders", "resources" and all these kind of stuff when companies talk about us. So I don't think any company has brillant "engineers" per se. They maybe have excellent algorithm solvers on a whiteboard. Google, Facebook, etc.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

PhrosTT 9y ago

My person & abritrary list of companies I consider to be 'above' the Big 4: Stripe Two Sigma SpaceX Maybe AirBnb & Netflix?

harrisreynolds 9y ago

FYI. Big Four = Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft I'd guess Stripe, Palantir and AirBnB would be up there too.

JBReefer 9y ago
People are downvoting you for including Palantir, which has a reputation of over-inflating the quality of its engineers, and consistently choosing big name schools over experience. I don't know if it's true, when I interviewed with them they seemed very interested even though I only took 3/4 years of a cs degree, and graduated with a different degree from RPI. I'm just explaining their reputation.

harrisreynolds 9y ago

Joel Spolsky always seemed to have an aptitude for attracting great people to Fog Creek Software. See joelonsoftware.com for a treasure trove of knowledge if you somehow have never heard of him.

j7ake 9y ago

The best engineers are probably working in academia doing research.

herickson123 9y ago
I generally think of these folks as scientists and engineers doing work in the real world.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nitwit005 9y ago
I doubt even the academics would agree with that one.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I think a better question would be which company has the best environment for engineering? I see a lot of smart people with a lot of potential working on crap projects.

devonkim 9y ago

To be contrarian, I'll point toward financial engineering (not retail or I-banking and such) such as Renaissance. It takes some pretty crazy and smart people to dig into FPGAs and HDLs trying to write what would normally be CPU based algorithms while focusing upon latency and availability as well when so many dollars are in motion. The industry's secrecy habits make it hard to get a fair assessment, but I've never heard of anyone incompetent at such a place while I've heard gobs of stories of incompetent people at large tech companies.

SirLJ 9y ago
Plus they much much better compensated compare to the typical Silicon Valley company

rl3 9y ago

My vote is Epic Games. If you look at UE4 changelogs, the amount of productivity is staggering. Core engine programming is no joke either, let alone on a commercial engine used by half the industry.