Will taking a job in one sector set my career path
Hey I’ve been pretty luck last week and I managed to get 2 job offers.
One is a good gig at a massive, old school financial group. I’m talking I have to wear a suit and tie. My biggest worry though is the tech is old and my coworkers and higher ups don’t seem bleeding edge so I doubt I’ll be flexing my developer muscles. Plus they have a volleyball intramural league
The other company is contracted for 6 months with a really cool tech IoT company. Job through Insight Global, Full remote, Has amazing Glassdoor reviews, cool projects, I crushed their technical interview so I feel like I can actually contribute.
I’m leaning towards the financial group because money matters and I want to feel secure.
What I’m worried about is after 2 years I’ll be 27 and I’m scared that working as a SWE for a financial group won’t look as good so I’ll never be able to work on a project that I’m passionate about again
Any advice?
It’s really up to what you value most I would say. Personally I work to live, and all of my passions are outside of work, even if they are programming-related. I get paid ridiculous money doing BS work at some corporate company doing nothing for the world, and I’m okay with that. If you would rather do something cool and innovative for a company and put in a lot of effort that would potentially only be compensated by the knowledge and experience that you gain, that’s also an option. It all depends on what you want your career to look like.
Semi-related, please learn about Boglehead investing while you’re young and stuff all your phat programmer money into the right places. You could retire by the time you’re ~40, and that may shape your expectation of what you want your full career to be.