Every year, some newspapers publish various "most 'popular / sought after / prestigious / etc.' employer" lists, where they've polled various students and fresh grads, typically among STEM/Business/Law students.
The company rankings, seem to correlate by how much they spend on ads and recruiting campaigns.
But what's strange, to me at least, is that FAANG companies also dominate those list - despite the fact that they only have very small satellite offices here in my country (in Scandinavia), where they work on quite niche products / problems.
I always found it a bit curious, when talking to highly motivated and talented young people in tech, that basically dream about joining companies like Microsoft, knowing fully well that they'll be working on some Office 365 feature - probably fixing bugs.
Microsoft, on their side, can pick and choose among talent - because they'll get run down with applicants either way. They could hire good students with Master's Degrees, make them janitors, and still it wouldn't even dent their reputation - because kids will blindly follow lists as mentioned above, and the dream of a prestigious employer on their CV.
Pay at a FAANG is often significantly higher, even in remote satellite offices, compared to the local market. Also, working at a FAANG early in your career, especially in an area where this is uncommon, is a very clear boost to your CV. You don't have to spend your entire career there. People don't give enough credit to new grads to know where the market is.
As an FYI, most of the newspapers’ dream places/best places to work are bought and paid for by companies’ PR departments - it’s not a meritocratic competition and afaik, they rarely actually conduct polls or ask real employees. At best they’ll take a glance at Glassdoor rankings
The company rankings, seem to correlate by how much they spend on ads and recruiting campaigns.
But what's strange, to me at least, is that FAANG companies also dominate those list - despite the fact that they only have very small satellite offices here in my country (in Scandinavia), where they work on quite niche products / problems.
I always found it a bit curious, when talking to highly motivated and talented young people in tech, that basically dream about joining companies like Microsoft, knowing fully well that they'll be working on some Office 365 feature - probably fixing bugs.
Microsoft, on their side, can pick and choose among talent - because they'll get run down with applicants either way. They could hire good students with Master's Degrees, make them janitors, and still it wouldn't even dent their reputation - because kids will blindly follow lists as mentioned above, and the dream of a prestigious employer on their CV.