Arista Networks

It's a good place. Work culture is bad, only if you report to a few extraterrestrial creatures. The company is going to have reasonable success.

So, you will have your regular salary and bonuses for the rest of your life easily.

But what is in it for grads joining from top-notch universities in India? Guys, look around you: people in their mid-20s are here because they are vesting their first or second pre-IPO stocks. Most of the managers here joined pre-IPO and have made their money. If they are to be in networking, this is as good/bad a place as any. Don't fall for top management rhetoric. This, of course, is a golden goose for them. They hold a lot of equity.

I joined pre-IPO as a fresh grad, and I am going to move on once I complete four years. Why should we/you, the younger generation, be here if we/you are not making anything beyond salary and bonus? The Bangalore startup market is so hot that anyone will beat the salary being offered here and will give you substantial stocks. You will get to work on big data, on AI, on Machine Learning. Those are the happening things in software. Even if you don't make money in stocks there, you will learn trendy things. Don't be scared about losing jobs. You can move to bigger companies if things go bad. The biggest risk you can take in life is to not take a risk. Don't fall for what management is feeding you. Their interests are aligned with Arista's, not yours.

What skills are you building by doing TACC and Python? Everything in networking has been figured out. There is no real innovation. If you want to do justice to the two years of hard work you put in after your tenth grade, and the hard work during engineering, get into a domain that has a lot happening. Look at the US team: no one from tier-1 (or perhaps even tier-2) universities is joining. The quality of education in tier-1 US universities is certainly better, but the analytical skills of students who get in are no way better than ours.

All the best to the company and to those of you who plan to be here for the long term. I am off in another few months.

I have no advice. I know you guys can't compete with the startup ecosystem in Bangalore. I don't blame you for that. My ratings here are from a new grad or someone with less than 4 to 5 years of experience perspective.