[fapjacks]

Please don't goalify working at one of the behemoth hiveminds. You will become a better hacker by working at a small, scrappy non-unicorn startup -- meaning, an actual startup -- with tons of work to do. It's not for everybody, but where else can you hack on machine learning on the same day you experiment with building infrastructure? There is so much work to do all around that you'll find yourself digging deep and learning tons of new stuff every single day. One year at a startup I think is worth five at a big ass corporation. Going to work for Google, you'll forever be at the behest of naturally-talented CS PhDs that spend all day answering Gmail support tickets. You won't ever get to play with the cool toys at one of those companies. Seriously. That is one thing I've learned after twenty years in this industry.