FAANG SWE Intern --> MBB
I'm a current sophomore at a T10 semi-target (Northwestern, CalTech, Johns Hopkins) with a FAANG SWE internship offer next summer. Although I'll probably end up taking it, I'm pretty set on recruiting for consulting stuff my junior year—I honestly just don't see myself writing code for the rest of my life and career exits from consulting/MBB are much more attractive IMO.
Does anyone know how SWE would be perceived on my resume for junior summer consulting internships? I have pretty good on-campus involvement/leadership and did a search fund internship this past summer so I'm confident I could spin up a good "why consulting" answer. I also think it's too late for me to recruit for consulting/finance-related internships for next summer and even if it's not, I just don't think I could land anything that would really warrant me reneging on the FAANG.
What do you guys think?
MBB applications are similar to college apps, they want to see you excel in what you do but don’t care too much about what field that is - FAANG swe is a shiny name on a resume that shows your intelligent and hard working. You’ll be well positioned to recruit for consulting for junior summer as long as you make sure your story/ casing is solid
Glad to hear, thanks for your response!
Currently go to one of the schools you listed and felt the exact same way. I had SWE internships for all 3 summers and will be joining one of MBB for full-time so it's definitely possible! Fwiw I think my background actually helped for recruiting if anything
Why do you think that it actually helped recruiting—if you don't mind me asking
Hey don't mean to hijack the thread, but do you know if recruiting for FAANG SWE is still open for summer 2023? I'm a junior currently struggling to get to the interview stage despite a good resume. Did you get a referral by any chance?
Appreciate the help. Whatever happens, you're in a great position!
Recruiting is definitely still open, only Amazon might be kind of backlogged since they opened so early. The rest plus other FAANG-tier companies are still recruiting heavily (except maybe Meta). Source: have a ton of friends recruiting SWE right now
Edit: had a referral for my current offer
Thanks SB+. Roughly when does the recruiting cycle end?
For those who did SWE internships and are recruiting/recruited for MBB, why? On paper, SWE is better pay, less hours. Obviously there’s much more to a job than that, but what was the reasoning behind your switch?
I can't speak for everyone but the biggest thing that turns me away from SWE is the lack of autonomy/scope you have in your career. If you stick around in FAANG/top unicorns your whole life, you're just pouring all your time and talent into some myopic feature an executive/product manager told you to produce. Even if you climb up the ladder and manage to become a staff/principal engineer, the scope you touch is pretty minimal and in my opinion it's pretty hard to stay fulfilled and motivated that way.
The WLB is also a lot worse than you think at top companies (amazon is notorious for this) so it's not unheard of for engineers to work 60 hours/week with constant on-call rotations which can be super stressful. Maybe in previous years you could get to a company like Google/Microsoft and vest away the rest of your career but these coasters are also the first ones to get cut at the first sign of an economic downturn (like we have right now).
Your pay caps out pretty hard at a certain point and once you become a staff/principal (which very few do) your career progression is pretty limited. Obviously you can always jump ship and do/join some startup but that comes with a huge downside and opportunity cost.
In my eyes, consulting (especially MBB) is just way more attractive since I could eventually become the exec/whatever that's calling the shots. Not everyone wants to do that and tons of people are super happy in the software industry, especially those who have a genuine passion for coding and engineering stuff, but that's just not me.
Obviously I'm only a sophomore in college so I don't know everything but those are the main things I've pulled away from talking to people I know/have networked with who are/were in consulting or in software engineering.
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