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Discussion on: Would You Rather Work in a Small Startup or a Large Corporation?

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Eljay-Adobe • Edited

Different kinds of companies have different pros/cons.

A large corporation will have process and culture in place that are not going to change. (Satya Nadella has been proactively trying to change the culture & processes of Microsoft, and has very limited success (mostly lip-service success, in my opinion). Changing culture & processes of a company is a heck of a slog!) If the culture/processes work for you, great! If the culture and/or processes rub you the wrong way, well... they're not going to change, so either adopt-or-adapt or be perpetually frustrated. The benefit of a large corporation is that it provides the illusion of job security, which can be very comforting. And usually the benefits are good.

A small startup is precarious because they are threading the fine line between burn rate and becoming sufficiently profitable to establish themselves as a small business (post-startup). The benefit is stock options which are either worthless (99% chance, because the startup folds), or retirement money (1%).

In between small startup and large corporation is: independent consultant (make yourself into a one-person LLC, and be your own boss), small business (post-startup), medium business, large business (on its way to becoming a large corporation). (If you work for a consulting company, and you are a salaried FTE... that's the same as being in a S/M/L business or Large Corporation, depending on the consulting firm.)

What I look for is: do I like the culture & processes, do I like the management, do I like my colleagues, do I like my product (or in particular, the product's codebase).