About Companies
Out of the many companies offering jobs and internships, computer science students often talk about applying to “FAANG”, the “Big N”, “Unicorns”, Startups, and other seemingly esoteric types of companies. In this section, we will cover what all of these terms mean and discuss other major classifications of companies and what makes them different in their recruiting process. Also, we will discuss important factors to consider when evaluating a company on whether or not you should work for them.
Common Company Types
FAANG / Big N
FAANG is an acronym short for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google; while Big N is a more inclusive term of the top publicly traded tech companies (companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Snapchat, etc). For many students, FAANG and Big N are considered to be the “end goal” for where to work due to their prestige, high compensation, extraordinary benefits, and other factors. However, these companies are also the most competitive in their recruiting processes and thus require applicants to be highly skilled in interviewing and technical skills (and often require prior internship experience as well).
Unicorns
Unicorns are a special type of privately-held startup companies that have a company valuation of over one billion dollars. Examples of these companies include ByteDance (TikTok), Robinhood, Reddit, and Epic Games. Unicorns also tend to be highly competitive in their recruiting processes and in turn offer valuable compensation and benefits packages. Many unicorns turn into Big N companies once they “IPO” and become publicly traded companies.
Startups
Startups are companies that are early in their development and are typically much smaller than other established companies. Startups are constantly emerging each year and are very volatile since most are early in developing their product and are actively seeking for funding from investors. Startups can be great places to find an internship early in your degree as they typically are less competitive and may not strictly follow the lengthy interview process of top tech companies. However, many startups only offer unpaid internships or positions with low compensation due to their lack of funding, and can be risky to work for long-term in the case the product flops.