Where to Start Your Coding Career: Corporate, Tech, or Agency?

11 Apr 2025 #career

If you’re looking to start your coding career, start by understanding each company type has its own vibe.

These days, stability and job security are hard to find. Recession, high interest rates, layoffs, AI, you name it.

In over 10 years, I’ve worked in non-tech corporate companies, tech companies, and software agencies. This is what I’ve found.

Non-tech corporate companies

I started at a “boring” job.

I was at the IT department of a large company in my city. That was my first contact with office politics and the corporate world. Spoiler alert: I was fired.

This type of company in one word? Slow.

If you land a job here, expect more office politics and bureaucracy. The larger the company, the more you’ll find. They tend to offer more benefits and might feel stable.

But don’t expect to work on the shiniest and brightest tech stack or tools. Be ready to work on a legacy codebase with outdated or little documentation, fixing bugs and hacking to add new features without breaking anything.

Tech companies

Tech companies tend to move faster than corporate jobs.

In a tech company, you’re helping the company make money. You aren’t an expense anymore. That often means higher salaries.

This is the place where you’d find TDD, DDD, any other DD methodology, code reviews, Kubernetes, the Cloud, and the shiniest and brightest.

But, they also come with higher risk of burning out.

Software agencies

Here, you are an employee assigned to a client company or project.

There’s good money with agencies if you live in a place with low cost of living and earn your salary in stronger currencies. Money will pass from the agency to your bank, while they take a good chunk of it. That’s the business.

Also, understand that companies prefer agencies as a risk-free alternative to hiring. When they don’t need more hands on a project, they’re just an email away from letting people go. Again, that’s the business.

Expect client rotation and possibly months without pay while the agency finds you another client.

With agencies, there are fewer chances of growth since you’re sold as a pair of hands.

Of course, YMMV.

Rather than choosing a company for its benefits, start experimenting with your career, then make a 5-year career plan (or intention), and pick the jobs and places that take you closer to that plan. That’s a lesson I wish I had known 10 years ago.