What are some reasons I should accept a Goldman Sachs offer for a software developer position over a startup?

Here is what Goldman will offer you if you join it straight out of college. 3 awesome months in NYC. It's pretty much a paid vacation. A chance to meet and network with grads around world. It's pretty cool to travel to any financial center around the world and have friends there. It will pay you a lot of money if you stick around for a few years and markets are good. You will work with some of the smartest ppl around and truly understand what team work means, you will learn what "we can do this together" culture truly means. You will learn how to operate in high pressure situations without pointing fingers. But unforunately you may end up not doing to much tech work( you may do some cool stuff depending on your team), but never as in depth as in a start up. At a start up you will thrown to the deep end of an ocean and expected to swim against the waves, at Goldman you be asked step into shallow end with someone holding your hand at least for 6 months to a year. But if you are good, Growth at Goldman is pretty fast. And you will get cool stuff to work on but never like an start up. This is coming from someone who has worked at Goldman for 5 years and now is a co founder at a tech start up. If I were to make the decision with this knowledge it would be difficult choice but I would pick start up 7 out 10 times I made the decision. So best of luck.

I'd take the Goldman offer.  Once you take the Goldman offer, if you decide to work for a startup, there will be a lot of startups offering jobs.  If you work for the other companies, then it will be hard to move to Goldman later.Working in an investment bank will be *VERY* useful when you go to work for a startup since you'll see what it looks like on the other side of the table.  Even if you hate your job, you'll have a list of things that you want to do differently.This is also a unique opportunity.  One thing that I've noticed is that there are a lots of questions from newbies who have gotten tech offers from Goldman.  The reason for this is that Goldman has made the strategic decision to fire a lot of their senior people and then use that money to hire cheaper junior people.   Also Goldman is doing some massive internal restructuring, and it will be useful to see this from the inside.What this means is that it's likely that Goldman won't be as actively hiring newbies in the future, so I'd take the Goldman offer.

It really depends on your long term goals. If you want to start a tech startup in 5 years, go to the tech startup. Going to Goldman or a 150 person startup won't teach you how to hustle your way to a product market fit. If you want to accelerate your career in terms of responsibilities & title, then go to the 150 person startup.Promotions at Goldman take a minimum 1.5 years. At a fast growing startup, you can create your titles & job descriptions.At a tiny startup, you may never have a big enough pie to get enough seniority. If you want to build a transferable, decent resume with a high probability, go to Goldman. Going to Goldman will probably net you the most in salary in the short run. However, being in IT, you will have to deal with the fact that you are not part of the front office.

I had an offer from Goldman for a tech position as well. I turned it down in favor of one of the core high tech companies in the Bay Area (read Google/FB/etc). But effectively, as a few other answers mentioned, Goldman Sachs will look nice on your resume but it's an investment bank at heart. You as a developer will never have the same "oomph" as the front office investment bankers that bring in the millions for Goldman. Again, from what I saw when I interviewed, the technology you work with might not be cutting edge (this depends somewhat on your team). So to summarize - if you want a decent stepping stone with a good brand on your resume, go to GS. If you think the startup has a chance of making it big and like the work there, definitely choose the startup.