Let me see if I can address some of this. Trying to be respectful in my response as well. Source: work for large tech consulting company, don't classify myself

Let me see if I can address some of this. Trying to be respectful in my response as well. Source: work for large tech consulting company, don't classify myself as a "good" programmer, just somewhat of one. "Don't pay very well" - not necessarily true. Comparable to FAANG? Sure, but industry? I'm not as confident. Think of the internal IT group of your favorite retailer, bank, insurance company, whatever. That junior staff doesn't have nearly the income potential a junior consultant does. Not everyone has the opportunity or the "credentials" to get in front of FAANG, NSA, SpaceX, etc. "Work is generally boring but tedious" - I suppose this is how you define boring. Is working on social security and benefits systems glamorous? Maybe not. Banking infrastructure? IT Governance systems? Payroll? Project planning? Financial management? Reporting? I know people who obsess over some of these systems. People build careers on working with Oracle/ SAP; I'd hope they don't view their own work as boring. I'd rarely describe large scale implementation/ strategy work as tedious. There are some monster projects out there, no doubt, but most projects have well defined guidelines, milestones, etc. In almost all of the companies I've consulted with, our team is moving 3x as fast as the client because usually our projects are scoped as thinly as possible to win bids (cheaper seems to win a lot, unfortunately), and we simply don't have the luxury to work slowly. Time and materials may be an exception to this, but those are not as common as you may think. "Corporate cultures are not known for attracting top talent" - this is a tough one to answer because I think it depends on how you define "top talent". If you're using undergrad as a benchmark, then sure, big tech consulting firms don't usually pull Harvard or Stanford grads (though they are in our ranks). Consulting work is a balance between being an effective conduit between your client and internal/ outsourced engineering teams. I'd argue a "10x programmer" may not be very effective in a client-facing position discussing strategy, etc. This is not to say the engineer isn't valuable, but let me take another stance: "top talent" programmers want to work on bleeding edge things, and Fortune 500 doesn't have much of that to go around, because it's a risk. I can't tell you the number of clients I've worked with who still use a mainframe with a COBOL developer. Even doing simple things like data interoperability between systems can be a nightmare because enterprise systems may not have native API's, so you end up hacking together these weird FTP-then-scrape type solutions to move data around. Is it the way it should be? No, but you aren't there to rip up their whole ecosystem of tools because you want to use a REST API instead of SOAP. Regarding your options: 1. Listed earlier, but not everyone is lucky enough to get to interview with FAANG. Speaking from experience, my background didn't get me in the door out of undergrad. 2. Doable, sure. You're a bit location bound here... statistically speaking, most startups are in the Bay Area. Maybe NY too. So if you aren't already in those areas, you're not around a lot of seed companies that you can get in front of. Some folks also may not be willing to take the risk that a startup entails. Would you take $50k + options in a 5 person company versus $100k + bonus from a big company right out of school? Not saying one is right, but there's only a subset of folks that would/ can consider this route. 3. Research/ research-like work. Just a prohibitive as 1 I'd say. It's unfortunate that college is such a "gate" for many of these opportunities. Trying to join a company/ institution that doesn't actively have a presence on your college campus is an uphill battle. Doable, yes, but the odds aren't in your favor. Particularly if you don't know anyone and it's just a cold application. Would love to continue the conversation. As a closing note - consulting is seen as a great short-term gig. Everyday I get to see how the world's largest companies operate, I can be industry-agnostic, and work in a variety of roles from strategy through execution of IT projects. I would argue a consulting background is an excellent launchpad to the "next" thing, which could very well be any of your three above.