January 16th, 2020
I remember when I graduated college I was so excited to work for a corporation because it "had a great name". I could tell all my friends and family that I worked at X and I remember getting praise and excitement.

But now I look back and I cringe at that so hard.

After actually starting the job, I realized that all companies are the same and having loyalty to a corporation is such a childish thing. How can you love a brand? It is not a real thing. You might love the products it designs or the food it makes, but loving the brand? That's lame. It's superficial too.

It's one thing to like a company for its products, but it's a whole lot cornier to love a company because it makes you look good. For example, someone who works at Goldman Sachhs or something. You also see this at trendy tech companies like Google. "I do XYZ at Google".

People also obsess over these tech companies moves like Apple and Amazon and Google. "Did you see Amazon bought XYZ for 12 B dollars?" Sick. How does that impact you?

I find it so ridiculous that people obsess over faceless brand name corporations. Let's talk about the actual founders, CEOs, researchers, open source contributors or people that are actually doing the work.

I have a friend who wanted to get a job so bad at Spotify. She called it her 'dream job'. I asked her why she cares so much about working there. Her answer whittled down to something like "it's such a cool company". Don't you care more about the type of work you'd be doing there? The specific projects you'd be assigned or get to work on? What about who you'd be working with? What if you got your 'dream job' and then you had the worst manager of all time?

When it comes down to it, most companies are 90% the same when you get inside. They all have their issues, and most roles inside do the same work. Programmers program and project managers manage projects and recruiters get people hired. That's why I would work at a startup over Google any day. And that's why I would build my own company over working at a startup. 

The importance is in the work that you do, what you learn, and how fast you can grow yourself. You're not gonna accelerate those things at Google. Although it is probably really nice to tell everyone that you work at Google.