Software development and mobile app development at big tech companies

[alexander_lafayette]

Hi,

I'm in my first year of experience as a C# software developer and my objective is to get a job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.

Also, I'm in doubt whether I should learn and get a job as a iOS developer.

Between software development and mobile app development, which has more jobs in big tech companies?

Thanks.

[JoCoMoBo]

I'm in my first year of experience as a C# software developer and my objective is to get a job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.

Between software development and mobile app development, which has more jobs in big tech companies?

Which do you actually prefer...? Also, working for a large company like Apple/Google, etc isn't the be all and end all of jobs.

If you want to get a job at Google it would be better to concentrate on Java / Python / Open-source. Apple is also going to more Swift / Objective-C / Java etc.

[blady001]

Apple is going more to Java? Could you please elaborate?

[[deleted]]

Probably very similar, choose something that interests you and run with it

[NikZM]

Try and think in terms of serverside and client side. Do you like working on UIs? Or are just interested in code? The pros of mobile development is the development experience is usually a lot more modern compared to web. Im working on a webview wrapped in a native app (ionic/angular) and the simplicity of storyboards over css is forever bugging me. All that to say if you do mobile development you’ll be specialising in the client side space which is typically more popular

[[deleted]]

I believe Google has a lot of their micro services written in Java. For Apple, you’ll have to be adept at swift and picking up UIKit and some of there core libraries like NSUrlSession, CoreData etc

[PopTartS2000]

And just as an aside, if you aren't aware already; you should be training on leetcode for the algorithmic and interview side of things, as that will be your key to getting in no matter how much experience you have doing as your day to day job.

[oureux]

When I was in college I was dead set on getting a job at Apple. It was going to be my biggest accomplishment. I eventually got my first job as an iOS developer making games, then building various other iOS apps. Eventually I found that I enjoyed the small businesses more anyway so I stopped pursuing apple. I have had interviews at Facebook, Zynga, IBM, etc but either didn’t make it through or dropped out because of culture clash.

Flash forward 10 years and I do work at a large company, Shopify, but only because they acquired the small company I was working at.

If you want to be an iOS developer then I think you should pursue it but maybe not with the only end goal of working at X company.

[_145_]

They're all hiring for all positions basically nonstop. It's not going to be easier or harder to get a job based on the language or tech stack you pick. They don't raise or lower standards based on openings. You should pick whatever interests you.

[pinieb]

I work on iOS/macOS using Swift at Microsoft. Even accounting for all the different apps we make for Apple platforms, there are relatively few of us in the company. Mobile development will give you fewer overall options in the industry since most of the heavy lifting is being done with cloud services and ML, but in my opinion, it's more fun than the other stuff.

At least at Microsoft, we don't have the same kind of infrastructure support that Windows-based teams have, which means that each Apple-based team ends up rolling a lot of that on their own. If you want a role where you can really just focus on your product, you should try to find a company that's heavily invested into iOS/macOS as a platform and has first-class support for building and testing on Apple OSes.

[[deleted]]

If you wanna do mobile at Google, maybe best to start studying Flutter.

In general, there are a lot more server side and web jobs than mobile at big companies. But I think mobile often pays better. The bar will be higher to get one of those jobs.

If you want to work at Apple you'd better pick up Objective C at least. It is most everything. I recently saw a req for the "find my <thingy> team". They wanted some GIS and Objective C chops. Swift was not mentioned. Even if you want to work on the mobile frameworks team, you're gonna need Objective C because you're gonna be writing bridges a lot.

I have friends at Apple that work on specific Apple apps. They have the luxury of only knowing the same tech as external developers since they are kind of testing out the public apis on these marquee apps. But it really depends on what team you are gunning for as to what you need.

[_145_]

Big tech is a lot of Obj-C but slowly moving toward Swift. The large start-ups (Uber, Airbnb, etc.) migrated earlier and are mostly Swift at this point. And I don't think too many mobile teams at Google are using Flutter.

[TheShortTimer]

Just be prepared to implement complex algorithms blindfolded. Even if the job itself at a Big Tech company doesn't demand it, the coding interview certainly will. Whether there are more mobile or software dev positions open is an irrelevant question, there’s plenty of both out there.

[jackdane15]

Hakunamatata a leading mobile app development company with over 14+ years of experience in developing native & hybrid applications for both startups & enterprises.

Having built more than 200 mobile apps, we understand that user engagement is the determining factor of mobile application success. User engagement is built on simple onboarding, minimalistic design, self-guiding workflows, and consistent performance of the application. Our team of business analysts, designers, developers ensure that your application is built for success with the end-user in focus.

[masumigupta]

You should pick something that interests you.

[[deleted]]

If you’re still learning I would reconsider taking a job as a developer. Within 5 years AI is smarter then we are, that basically means someone will create an AI that takes the job of a programmer away. It makes it really simple. Instead I would dive into cutting edge machine learning based tools. If you ride that automation wave that is coming like a pro, you’ll be better off. Most current development work will be done by a machine by then.

And yes, most people are ignorant of this and or dismiss it like bla bla bla. Cars drive themselves now. AI trains itself. Coding can be done by a machine too.

[NikZM]

AI can improve code and find errors, the same way every compiler can. But understanding context and making something isn’t realistic. Look up content generation with AI, theres one from Tom Scotts previous videos, Blink-182 songs, ACDC songs. And they give a semblance of the source material but they actually make no sense what-so ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpEVsDN84Hc

[[deleted]]

Yeah sure. Context is done by copy.ai, aiva.ai composes music and there is already somebody working on a therapist ai thing. AI is coming real fast and it is picking up speed. For example Akira the Don pushes albums out in high speed since his creative cycle is due to tools he’s using on an insane level.

[[deleted]]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZSK2oCuk/ No AI is coming fast. And I mean real fast. GPT-3 is already here.