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Ask HN: Would you rather work for Microsoft or Amazon?
I am trying to decide whether I'd rather spend my summer at Microsoft or Amazon as an intern. Unfortunately there's only one of me...good problem to have, I guess, but still requires a decision. There are things I really like about Microsoft and there are things I really like about Amazon. Everyone I've talked to from both companies seems really happy there, but I guess if they're talking to potential hires that's then it's their job to seem happy. The team I would be on at Microsoft is a reasonably interesting one (and my potential manager seems like a really good guy); with Amazon I'd get to list team preferences after accepting my offer. The offers are pretty similar in most respects; one is a few hundred dollars more a month than the other, which is nice but I feel that it's less important in the big picture decision of choosing a company.
This decision carries extra weight because although it's just an internship, assuming I do well it may become my first full time job after I graduate next year.
So...if anyone at HN has experience working at either company, or knows people who do, or just has some advice/insight, please share. :) Thanks!
(I'm a reasonably active HN user, but created this account to increase anonymity - so I'm not just wisdom leeching.)
- vaksel 18y agoCan you give a general idea of what kind of "team" at MSFT? is it internet related or software related?
- futureintern 18y agoWell...both, actually. Sorry for the vagueness, but I prefer to stay anonymous as much as possible.
- icey 18y agoDo you feel that you want to be a career developer or do you think you'd prefer starting up somewhere? If you think you want to be a career guy, go with Microsoft; it's golden on any resume and it has the benefit of treating its employees very well. If you think you want to be a startup guy, I'd say that you hear about many more people doing startups with Amazon in their past than Microsoft. Plus, Amazon is an expert in the efficiency game - they know what technologies can get the job done, and being exposed to that culture is great for forming the startup mentality.
- futureintern 18y agoYou've covered most of the things I like about the two companies. I don't want to be "just" a developer long term for the sake of the work itself, but the stability of MSFT is nice (which is not to say that Amazon isn't stable). Ideally I'd like to save enough to have the ability to do less stable things down the line.
- futureintern 18y agoOn reflection (too late to edit it), that makes it sound like I'm leaning towards MSFT. I guess maybe I am. But I really admire the energy and efficiency of Amazon, as well as the innovation. I can't imagine MSFT ever launching something like Mechanical Turk, or any of the AWS stuff...I know they launched some me too stuff after Amazon, but that's not the same as being the first to do it.
- icey 18y agoI don't know if this helps you or not; but I know 4 MSFT employees and 3 of them are pretty sure they are going to retire from there. All three I know from my days consulting. The fourth I met while he was at Microsoft, and he gets to work on interesting things; I just don't know him well enough to ask him if he plans on being there for awhile. MSFT does have interesting projects going on as well. The R&D wing has its fingers in some pretty cool stuff like Surface and Photosynth.
- elq 18y agoone of the reasons you hear about more amazon folks in starups vs. MS is that MS generally treats developers very well so they tend to stay around. Amazon is not such a great company to work for, at least according to the people I know that "did time" there.
- futureintern 18y agoThanks - that's the kind of thing I was hoping to find out. Could you elaborate a bit on why people didn't like being at Amazon?