re: Would you rather work for a large corporation or a small mom and pop style business?

You don’t have to be a genius to work at a large tech firm. Oh sure, if you get in by the normal interview route, you are either smart or very lucky. But there are other ways to get in, like the small company you work for being acquired. Hard to use this to your advantage, but at least you understand why your colleague is as dumb as a brick.

When a FAANG company pays half-again as much as an ordinary company, they expect something in exchange. Typically it is working 60 hour weeks, plus more at crunch time, since your salaried. Some positions at some FAANG companies pay only modest salaries, but they still expect all that overtime, because you should be grateful to get in.

All the money in the world is without value if you’re never home to spend it.
The bigger the FAANG company, the older is the software that you will probably be assigned to maintain.

If you work for a startup and their web site goes down, you can fix it in the morning. If you work for a Fortune 500 company, and their web site goes down, it’s all-hands-on-deck at zero-dark-thirty.

I generally think small companies struggle to provide the level of long term benefits that larger companies can provide. RSUs and options plus variable comp can eventually outpace base salary completely.

Large companies provide an appearance of stability but you are still only one economic downturn from mass layoffs.

I have worked for both. From a work perspective, I enjoy the small employer. From a salary/benefits perspective, the large company wasn't as inconsistent with cost increases and salary adjustments.

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I generally think small companies struggle to provide the level of long term benefits that larger companies can provide

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Yep, I work for a large global company and the compensation and benefits are extremely good.
I will put up with the bureaucracy stuff and all of that for several more years just to set myself up well for retirement and have a good quality of life situation for my family

I can only speak for personal experience.

"Mom and pop" seems kind of derogatory. The company I worked for probably had only about 30-40 employees at its height, but I would not call it "mom and pop." We had something like a 21% market share in our industry.

When I think "mom and pop" I think of like a local flower shop or gas station.

That said, I find small companies to be much more enjoyable places for those who wish to find meaning in their work. You get to see the entire picture and feel less like a cog in a wheel. There is opportunity in terms of getting the chance to wear a lot of different hats and owning various processes, but that doesn't always translate to monetary gain as there just aren't as many jobs/departments to move to over time.

The smaller company also had better benefits than the larger company I worked for, but I realize one size does not fit all.

Larger companies are better suited for those who want to work somewhere for a couple years then leave for greener pastures. Yes, you are a cog in a wheel who doesn't have the opportunity to see far beyond your own sphere of influence, but odds are, you won't be at that one company long enough to care about seeing the full picture anyway.

Large companies are also full of what I would call warm bodies. These are people who desire to get lost in a crowd and do the bare minimum. Getting them to do anything remotely outside of their exact job description is like teaching Algebra to a dog, and there's no sense of urgency whatsoever. They are so indoctrinated by various policies, red tape, and procedures that they are completely unable to see the forest through the trees.

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Small companies tend to micro manage their people to death.

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I have only worked for a small company. I was the fourth hire. Recently, I made hires number 14, qt, and 16.

The micro manage comment is not my experience. I love the people I work for. When I started….it was ,” go produce.” And I did. Now, as we have grown, we have become a bit more formalized, but we are still a small company. Would not trade it for anything.

Also helps that I have an agreement with the owner that the goal is to build it and sell it. Offering me a percentage of those proceeds.

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Also helps that I have an agreement with the owner that the goal is to build it and sell it. Offering me a percentage of those proceeds.

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Yeah I would not want to work for a company whose sole reason for existence was to sell off to a bigger company

Do the rest of your co-workers know this?

I have worked at both.

Large corporation you are just a number to them. Nobody really cares about you.

Small corporation, it only takes 1 or 2 bad eggs to make the entire work environment toxic.