What do I look for in career opportunities?

August 30, 2025

After 3 Waterloo co-op terms and 2+ part-time jobs, I'm starting to get a better idea of what career opportunities I value.

Key themes

• • It should bring me outside my comfort zone – if I'm scared of the opportunity and feel like I'll get fired, that's a good sign.
• • How challenging is the job? The harder, the better – if I need to spend early mornings, late nights, and weekends to get shit done, that's a plus (but not for the easy monotonous work).
• • Ideally startups (or small entrepreneurial teams in big companies) rather than typical big tech.

What I look for

• • Team: The founders or teammates I work with daily should be cracked. I should feel inspired when I see their LinkedIns.
• • Business impact: No intern projects. I should have tangible numbers + metrics that describe the impact I've made after the internship. After four months, if I hadn't worked on what I did, would the customers / company have been worse off?
• • The work: Bleeding edge tech is exciting, I'd rather work on this than another full stack SaaS. The more unknowns and variables, the better.
• • Location: Huge plus if it's the Bay Area, New York, or Boston – these places have the highest talent density. If it's in Canada, the other points above must be very strong.

Blacklist

• • Government jobs
• • Banks (TD, RBC, BMO, CIBC, etc.)
• • Startups with no technical founders

My overall goals during these career opportunities

• • 10x shareholder value
• • The impact + results I have should encourage my manager to hire more Waterloo interns in the future