r/ECE • u/Mobile-Practice-7082 • 1d ago
New grad offer: Etched or Apple?
I am absolutely torn between two offers I have recieved for my first job out of college. Apple I will be on more product design EE (iphone, watch, etc) side, and etched I will be on the platform side. For me, I care about compensation (both offers are pretty similair in TC), if the work is enjoyable, and how it sets me up long term for my career. I enjoy grinding if it means I am learning a lot and have the opportunity for career growth. My reservations for apple is that it seems to be a little bit slow in terms of career growth and a feeling that they arent innovating as much I would hope. My concern with etched is that I am worried it might just be another chip startup and go under eventually - and I will have lost valuable years of resume credibility (and then I would regret not having apple on my resume). Anyone have advice on how to make this decision?
33
u/hardtanker_101 1d ago
I would say Apple. Its a big company with a LOT of departments. I'm pretty sure that they would have good managers that would listen to you and what you want. When a company hires talent, they prefer to keep that talent. So even if you find the work you are doing is boring, you will have a ton of opportunities to change departments until you find something that really excites you. Plus having Apple on your resume is going to be much much much more attractive then Etched.
28
u/WolverXNA 1d ago
Apple for the win. Etched is shady even right now. Their first-gen chip, SoHu, has no comparison metrics on their website so far. There are other companies like MatX, Fractile, and SambaNova that are also coming in strong. Cloud companies aren't backing down, either; MSFT, AWS, and Google have a solid footprint in AI inference chips. In fact, MSFT has a very impressive MAIA series of inference chips based on quantization. Apple is still creating the most impressive chipsets and is world-class when it comes to throughput.
Putting all of that aside, I still think Etched isn't worth it, at least at this point in your career. Brand name is huge. Apple will keep you solid for the future, and their compensation is legit. Etched is still in Series D and has a long way to go. Their stocks are paper money, and the WLB (work-life balance) is down in the gutter. My friend who joined Etched works on Sundays and is 100% in person. I asked him for a referral, and he personally told me it isn't worth it.
A thing or two about the grinding mentality and the 'I'm in my youth' mindset: if there is one thing I would change, it's to grind less and value WLB. I work around the clock and have developed hypothyroidism. I weigh 105 kgs, am very tired most of the time, and now my insurance supports me in taking GLP-1. I am a chipset designer. When I graduated, I was 75 kgs, a D3 college tennis player, looked fine as hell, and was one of the brightest college students. Trust me, life is too short to throw away. This AI thing is still a bubble, and no one knows the direction it's heading. Hope this helps!
21
u/Efficient_Algae_4057 1d ago
Both are great. Etched if you get equity is a no brainer. They could end up being acqui(hi)red and your equity could become more valuable and you might end up working on some special project. A firm like Jane Street wouldn't have invested at 21 Billion Dollars if they weren't certain it would be valued at a lot more in the near term. This was two months after another big VC invested at 10 Billion dollars. These investors (liquidity providers) don't do these investments unless they know for near certainty they gonna make a lot more money. There is a lot of inner circle things going on within these VCs and other tech companies. So, there is definitely the expectation that the company would be valued at a much higher rate in the near term. You could make after a year, what you'd make at apple for 10 years.
7
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
The equity offer I get from etched is really, really high but seems like general sentiment with startups is to view that as just "fake" compensation since the chance of a liquidity event is so low.
18
u/Efficient_Algae_4057 1d ago
"general sentiment with startups" - This company is not some Software as a Scam or a ChatGPT wrapper by nepo babies larping in SF. Their product is literally being used by arguably the best quant fund in the world and they decided to invest in it at twice the valuation they had two months ago.
"chance of a liquidity event is so low." - technically, this is true for all tech. Even the RSU or whatever Apple offers is dependent on you spending a few years there and doing well and the company doing well. There is always the chance they could lose their stock value.
There is a lot of risks with Etched, but the upsides are much higher and a risk worth considering.
The other aspect is that if they do IPO next year at 100 Billion dollars or get acquired by Anthropic or something similar, you will feel terrible for the rest of your life even if Apple's stock increases by 10%.1
u/Ok_Door5727 1d ago
Jane street is testing them, they haven't made an actual mass purchase order yet. And they are an investor, of course they want to make E look good.
I can bet you than JS has 100x or even 1000x as many nvidia gpu doing actual profitable work.
11
u/poffins 1d ago
Apple is already a large org, luck will define if you get into an area that grows enough for career growth.
In terms of career growth it's going to be a crapshoot. There are so many variables out of your control for going up the ladder fast past ICT4 or Senior Engineer. Generally you want to join a team where the area is receiving huge investment from execs, the headcount for that team is growing like 2-3x YoY, you need to join a area where you're in the "in" group with your manager and manager's manager. Timing when you join also matters, if you're too early you're not "senior" enough to get the leadership spots, if you join too late all of the leadership spots are filled. You also need to rise to the top of the list for people management trusts when those decision points come along. There's too many variables for you can't control for. At any point in time you might fall out of favor due to a reorg or you say the wrong thing and some random exec hates you.
The only thing you can control for is the number of opportunities to "grow" in your career. So join someplace that is exploding in growth and scope. That can happen either at a start-up or in large corps, you don't know until you join.
16
u/YetAnotherSpeculator 1d ago
You would be insane not to go to Etched.
Trust me, the people at Etched will be vastly more important to your network than the people you work at Apple with.
You also don’t want to lock yourself into product design engineering. Etched will provide future flexibility for career pivots.
3
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
Thanks for the response. In your opinion why do you think there seems to be such a large preference (at least in this post) for apple in this scenario?
5
u/MortCrimm 1d ago
Stability…..most people are risk averse. Apple doesn’t do layoffs(for the most part).
Apple is so big, you can be mediocre Af and stay employed for decades at this point.
Etched will likely be an absolute GRIND, but you are young.
2
2
u/Pretend_Astronaut430 7h ago
people in this post are not in the same tier as you lmao so they don’t even know what etched is . They hear “Apple” and think big name company = top of the market
5
u/Fascist2020 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m at Apple and I would recommend going to Etched!! Everything that you’ve said makes me believe Etched is a better fit - more learning, faster pace, more upside, and more cutting-edge work. Apple is fun and all but it’s slow in terms of growth and innovation plus stock upside is low.
Higher alpha with Etched and you can always go back to Apple having a much stronger understanding and responsibility early on!
1
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
Thanks for the response! Really helpful to hear how it is on the inside
1
u/Fascist2020 1d ago
Feel free to DM if you want more perspective.
Apple is good and I like working here but not sure how it grows from here.
Do your diligence on Etched though - hope it’s legit but some comments on the thread merit higher DD.
9
u/South-Virus2752 1d ago
Friend had similar decision but instead with Nvidia. He chose Etched, mainly due to talent and also total compensation lol. I’m also currently interviewing with etched so hopefully I can get an offer lol
3
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
Lol the total comp at etched is no joke + free food/housing subsidy. Though I will say its not as good as it looks due to the illiquid stock compared to nvidia/apple. Good luck on your interviews!
3
u/South-Virus2752 1d ago
Ya my friend was lowk bragging to me about it. It’s close to what some quants pay. And yes thank you, hopefully all goes well!
2
u/SunsGettinRealLow 1d ago
How’s his WLB at Etched? I’ve heard things lol
3
u/South-Virus2752 1d ago
Uh I don’t know because he’s starting January 2027. But when he was interning he told me everyone was working weekends. It’s pretty bad I’d say for WLB, but ngl the compensation makes up for it I guess lol
2
u/Expensive_Artist9290 1d ago
I would rather unalive myself than be friends with people that brag about their tc lol your life sounds like shit
2
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
Generally it sounds like if you want WLB, Etched is not the place to be. Friends there have told me that everyone is so driven and aligned with the mission that people just stay late because they want the company to succeed - not because there is some top down requirement to work long hours.
1
u/Square-Piccolo-8707 18h ago
Coming from a guy who has worked manufacturing engineering at apple and is now a product design engineer, if you are working on a system team (like iphone, watch, etc) you are probably not gonna have much of a work life balance anyway. I work 60-70 hours a lot of the weeks and have hit 100 hours during my time on iPhone around launch season in early september. Yes the comp is lower compared to etched because its a bigger company so you cant pay every employee like etched (gf works there so i know the tc lol). I would say bun the tc, if u are starting out focus on what you want in life, if u wanna grind like hell or learn but also have a bit of wlb. If u are good, the tc will follow
2
u/JoJo_Embiid 1d ago
how much is the etched offer ? just curios. i still remember the day i read about their established in 2024 should join them back then
4
u/greed-fantasy 1d ago
As a new grad, Etched has everything you want to start a career. Apple is a big name but your experience and potential to grow are orders of magnitude more limited.
Be aware that Etched will be very intense. I’ve worked closely with the company and there’s a lot of growing pains, figuring things out, a little bit of chaos. Normal things for a company growing as fast as they are.
5
u/pencan 1d ago
Etched is supposedly a sweatshop, and the options have massively increased in value over the last 6 months. Whether or not you believe in the (utterly insane, I’m not biased) 20b valuation I don’t think anyone believes it will 10x again. So keep that in mind when comparing TC
0
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
I dont mind the sweatshop part but the valuation increase is a good point - will keep that in mind.
2
u/honkeem 14h ago
Even if Etched goes under (as long as it's not like 1 month after you joined lol), then you'd still likely get more experience in the time spent there compared to Apple. The difference is whether or not the brand name on your resume carries more weight in getting interviews moving forward. However, past the interview, having better knowledge and experience obviously matters more, and Etched would likely be better longer term in that regard.
As for compensation, if your offers pretty similar TCs, then I'd probably think about what higher levels in that role might pay. They might pay the same for your first job, but what about your next promotion? Idk what title you're looking at exactly but if it's hardware engineers or something similar than levels dot fyi might have some data. They're pretty good for SWE data points but they have other things too.
2
u/HotDeadHot 13h ago
Just worry about doing a good job, because as a new graduate you’re going to be next to useless to the teams anyway. Focus on not getting shit canned.
2
u/kbd65v2 11h ago
I’ve met 2 of the founders and while one was a very nice guy, the CEO screams red flag to me. He was pretty openly trying to poach people at a private dinner (big faux pas) by throwing around insane equity offers. Also seems like his position (equity-wise) has been heavily diluted. But maybe there’s enough adults in the room now to manage things.
3
4
u/kayson 1d ago
I faced a similar decision, albeit a while ago, and for 4 different opportunities (being experienced and well networked makes this a lot easier vs when you're starting out).
What I ended up doing is assigning a weight to every factor that I was concerned about: total comp, WLB, interesting work, etc. After I did that, I assigned a 1-5 score for every factor at every company, then calculated the weighted sums. It was sort of close, but there was one definite winner.
In my experience, people don't really care about the name of the company you worked at. They care about the work that you did, your ability to communicate, especially technically, about your work, and your technical fundamentals.
Big companies are big. There are good teams and bad. I don't care if your resume says "Apple" if you didn't do anything interesting or challenging. Similarly, I don't care if you worked at a startup that went under if what you did was really cool.
4
u/Ancient-Purpose99 1d ago
Etched is mostly derisked at this point, they've produced their chips and Jane Street tested them and invested at a massive valuation. They're not at true early stage where it can literally go bust. Plus even if it declines, the Etched name is still a clear signal of talent
1
u/SenyaiGrubs 1d ago
I know engineers in both companies and you can definitely take ownership in both, that’s more so about your individual output and relationship with manager.
Have you previously interned at big companies like FAANG? If so, the name brand of Apple matters less.
2
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
Yes, I have 3+ internships at all reputable companies (google, spacex, tesla, etc) which is why part of me is okay with sacrificing a bit of brand name if it means I learn a ton and become a better engineer.
5
u/kingThrack 1d ago
For what it’s worth, interning and being full time are not the same thing. Seeing big tech internships is very nice to see for a new grad, but spending years as a full time engineer at a FAANG is a much more serious workload and will be viewed much stronger later on.
1
u/kss2023 1d ago
Congrats! Which courses in undergrad helped u land the internships and jobs at Apple and etched?
1
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
Thanks! I honestly wouldn't say any specific coursework helped me much. I was really involved with project teams on campus (FSAE, research, etc) and that is what was talked about in most of my internship interviews.
1
u/Direct-Astronomer-27 1d ago
Oh cool! I'm involved in FSAE too, and I've had my eye on Etched. Do you mind sharing what field your research was in? Thanks!
1
1
u/JoJo_Embiid 1d ago
can apple offer be deferred? if yes you can try etched for half a year to see if it works oit
1
u/MortCrimm 1d ago
You are young, swing for the fences with a startup. You could get filthy rich by being early at a startup.
Any FAANg will be beyond comfortable, but the opportunity for skyrocket growth isn’t there
1
1
u/brungybrung 1d ago
I’m a recruiter, I think the resume building at a company like Apple could be the best play. Working at a FAANG company for a few years can literally change your life and will pretty much guarantee you get good jobs in the future. A way for you to understand it, big company’s you become more of a specialist and get really good at one thing, at a start up or small company you will wear multiple hats and will be responsible for many things which is valuable also.
Here’s the difference though, if you go start up and then want to move back to enterprise, it’ll be very hard or impossible. Big companies pretty much require enterprise experience for whatever reason
1
1
u/Remarkable-Key-9335 18h ago
Apple no question, you setup your career by giving it the best base possible
1
u/OctavianResonance 17h ago
Join etched people are trolling, my friend there loves it, you have so much responsibility, and u will have a much easier time transitioning to different startups and stuff later on (so the upside will be a lot more)
1
1
u/1996_burner 14h ago
Apple for sure. Recently turned down etched for a verification position. I was super hyped about it, did an office tour and an onsite since I’m already near them. But something about them left a bad taste in my mouth. I was stressed that turning them down was the wrong move, but after continuing to talk to my friends in the company, I definitely made the right call.
Others have mentioned that Apple would be better on a resume and I’d have to agree. Etched will be one of those places others in the industry know, but it’s not us your resume needs to get past. It’s the recruiters first, and they’re all gonna recognize the name Apple before the name etched. I’d always recommend the bigger company as your first job. It’ll be easier to get other positions with it on your resume.
This isn’t even to mention that Apple ceo is coming from the hardware division, so many of my friends there are excited and it seems there’s good things coming towards the Apple hardware teams.
Disclaimer: I’ve never worked at either but was actively recruited and received an offer from Etched.
1
u/curious-retard 13h ago
Etched. I saw their office and the energy is at another level. Their office/role is going to look very different after a year. Apple will always be there for you. If you managed to get in once you will manage again.
1
u/fifthlfive 8h ago
i ended up turning down an etched offer after a recruitment attempt, somewhat for personal reasons and somewhat because i was skeeved out by the product and recruitment practices. i would be surprised if theres a ton of upside left on their options now (would love to be proven wrong in time of course). but apple stock is also a little bloated and you risk compensation variability there
it will come down to your team at apple (will you be promoted quickly? will you like the work and be challenged? there is a TON of inconsistency team to team and org to org) as well as your level of belief in the product etched is building. either way you'll be making $$$ so uh idk, follow your heart i guess
1
u/unbreaded_lunn 1d ago
Apple and it’s not even close. Etched is such a huge red flag on your resume…
1
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
Why is it a red flag?
1
u/unbreaded_lunn 1d ago
Etched is the new Theranos, period.
1
u/Siphonic_Halo 1d ago
Proceeds to not elaborate
2
u/WolverXNA 1d ago
Here is the reality behind those benchmarks: The Batch Size Illusion: Etched’s 500,000 tokens/sec figure is heavily optimized for a batch size of 1. In real-world hyperscaler deployments, inference APIs run concurrent requests at high batch sizes (e.g., 128 or 256) to maximize throughput. At a batch size of 256, a standard Nvidia H100 achieves around 45,000 tokens per second, and a B200 hits roughly 80,000. Etched has deliberately not published performance figures for these high-batch, real-world serving scenarios.
The Zero-Programmability Bet: Sohu achieves its throughput by stripping out all programmable units and burning the standard Transformer attention mechanism directly into fixed-function silicon (built on TSMC's 4nm node). It has no software abstraction layer. If the industry pivots to State Space Models (like Mamba), hybrid architectures, or if attention mechanisms fundamentally change, the Sohu chip cannot be updated with a firmware patch—it becomes a paperweight.
Unverified Silicon: As of 2026, these remain pre-production, vendor-supplied metrics. They have not been independently audited by MLPerf or third-party infrastructure reviewers. For a hyperscaler like Microsoft building the Maia series or Google building TPUs, sacrificing programmability entirely is an unacceptable risk. Etched's benchmark is a theoretical "best-case" scenario for a static snapshot of AI architecture, which perfectly illustrates why the Series D paper equity at a company taking a single, massive architectural gamble might not be worth the 80-hour weeks.2
u/pencan 1d ago
You’re a bit out of date on the programmability point. They ended up not doing the “etching transformer in silicon approach” mainly because their veteran hires probably told them that was a fucking stupid idea. Now they claim their advantages are “low voltage inference” and “cluster scale memory”. LVI comes from their architect previously designing Bitcoin mining rigs. I don’t know where CSM came from
1
u/WolverXNA 16h ago
Thought so 😂 even i was like what are these guys talking about . FYI this is their marketing material
Oh boy 2200 amps, Jane street really doesn't know what there are investing in. So these chips are always under load and 2200 amps on the PDN network. Good luck if this chip lasts more than 2 years . Jane street would end up paying more for chips failing simultaneously and replacing them. Tell their recruiters talent hoarding people from well established places aren't the people you want when doing a start up. You employ people who knows the ground up very well. For example Richard Ho who is doing it for OpenAI(they also have actual metrics post silicon despite being late into the game). Makes sense why none of the Google guys are leaving for this startup.
1
u/Allambrito 21h ago
Apparently you have more insight into all this than jane street does? You must be some kind of billionaire
1
u/poughdrew 1d ago
Etched. You'll meet peers for the next startup. At Apple, you're just going to meet more big company hoppers.
1
u/pythonlover001 1d ago
Etched is pretty cool ngl and I feel the bar at Etched is higher than the bar at Apple.
Another question to wonder is if you want to do product design EE in the long term or Platform (not sure what you mean by this as platform almost sounds like a software role)? That might be more important than the company prestige itself as the specialization/skill you gain might be more rewarding than the so-called "resume value".
1
u/Mobile-Practice-7082 1d ago
I honestly dont have a strong preference for the specific work between apple/etched as long I can get as much ownership as possible (btw by platform I mean like AI rack server system design). I do see the talent at Etched seems really high with a lot of ex-NVIDIA, apple, etc. and was pretty impressed with the interviewers when I talked with them.
1
u/pythonlover001 1d ago
How low level do they go? Rack server design seems to be lower level than product design.
0
u/nickleback_official 1d ago edited 1d ago
Looking at the job listing for etched it mentions ODM. That would be VERY different than system EE at Apple where you have complete design ownership. If that’s really the case the Apple is the no brainer choice for engineering development. If you’re worried about promotion I’d budget 4 years to ict4. What team at Apple?
-1
210
u/Koraboros 1d ago
Apple and you can use the big name to go to a start up much easier later on.