If you can get a job at Anthropic, Redwood, maybe OpenAI or Deepmind or other AI companies, those might be better than most software startups.
The first 1-2 years of software engineering work can be amazing for the experience. It really can depend on what team you work with though. Some have great standards and help train junior engineers. Others don’t, and won’t teach decent practices. My intuition is that the startup you’re considering is likely good (startups with lots of respect in tech circles, like Stripe, can be great), but I suggest asking some people who work there.
Many of the EA tech groups are much smaller or very early, so won’t be able to provide the same experience. (and, if you join them anyway after, you’ll get the experience they do provide then, anyway). Just chat to people in them and see what mentorship they can provide.
2 years seems like a bit much to me. If you join the software engineering role (and it’s not directly EA), I’d suggest being really intense about it if you can. Try to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Then, after 12 months, gauge how much you’re learning (and maybe, how quickly the stock options are rising in value) and decide things from then.
For me, I found that my first real “junior developer job” was incredibly interesting and useful, but the work got pretty boring after around 6 months. I left around 14 months in, and in retrospect, sort of wish I left ~2 months sooner.
One other thing to note: try to learn full-stack skills, not narrow domain skills. Spending 1-2 years on a company-specific database solution is bad, doing it with similar tools to what a tiny startup would use is good (for many EA sorts of things)
Personally, I’m excited about more strong generalist EAs having 1-2 years of strong software engineering experience. Software engineering comes up all over the place. It’s a highly general-purpose skill. It would give you a bunch of options later on.
I think I agree with Jack on the AI side.
If you can get a job at Anthropic, Redwood, maybe OpenAI or Deepmind or other AI companies, those might be better than most software startups.
The first 1-2 years of software engineering work can be amazing for the experience. It really can depend on what team you work with though. Some have great standards and help train junior engineers. Others don’t, and won’t teach decent practices. My intuition is that the startup you’re considering is likely good (startups with lots of respect in tech circles, like Stripe, can be great), but I suggest asking some people who work there.
Many of the EA tech groups are much smaller or very early, so won’t be able to provide the same experience. (and, if you join them anyway after, you’ll get the experience they do provide then, anyway). Just chat to people in them and see what mentorship they can provide.
2 years seems like a bit much to me. If you join the software engineering role (and it’s not directly EA), I’d suggest being really intense about it if you can. Try to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Then, after 12 months, gauge how much you’re learning (and maybe, how quickly the stock options are rising in value) and decide things from then.
For me, I found that my first real “junior developer job” was incredibly interesting and useful, but the work got pretty boring after around 6 months. I left around 14 months in, and in retrospect, sort of wish I left ~2 months sooner.
One other thing to note: try to learn full-stack skills, not narrow domain skills. Spending 1-2 years on a company-specific database solution is bad, doing it with similar tools to what a tiny startup would use is good (for many EA sorts of things)
Personally, I’m excited about more strong generalist EAs having 1-2 years of strong software engineering experience. Software engineering comes up all over the place. It’s a highly general-purpose skill. It would give you a bunch of options later on.