
Why You Need To Work For A Big Company - misham
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/33111/7-Reasons-Why-You-Need-To-Work-For-A-Big-Company.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+onstartups+%28OnStartups%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
======
latch
Its funny, my advice would be the exact opposite. Don't join a big company if
you are the kind of person who's ethusiastic and ambitious about what he or
she does. It'll more than likely crush you. It'll feel like you're back in
2001, your co-workers will likely be average to poor, you won't have a choice
in technology, you'll notice that being a shill is more important than being
good.

~~~
misham
I worked for a startup where it felt like I was being crushed. Most of my co-
workers and people running the company were average to poor, we didn't have a
choice in technology and I saw a person who downloaded porn all day, was
barely at the office and was caught with child porn on his computer promoted
to senior management.

That's not a good enough reason. I worked for a large company and know others
who work for large companies and find the work very rewarding.

The choice of what experiences will best suit you on your way to starting your
own company is more personal than black and white comparisons. Not all big
companies are evil empires designed to crush you (e.g. Google) and not all
startups are rosy playgrounds for engineers.

In the end, as expressed by several people here, it's a personal choice that
has to fit your own values and which experiences you want.

~~~
wyclif
_Not all big companies are evil empires designed to crush you (e.g. Google)_

Google is "designed to crush you"? Hmm.

~~~
gcheong
I think that was meant as Google is an example of a company not designed to
crush you.

------
zb
It's probably worth distinguishing between a big company where you're working
on the core business (i.e. an engineering company) and a big company where
you're working in a pure cost centre, like IT. I suspect that may explain the
diverging views of the article and some of the commenters here.

~~~
fookyong
I would also add that it's possible for this dynamic to change as a company
grows.

I speak from personal experience - successful e-commerce startup where I am
director of web.

Year 1 was about fast growth. We built a home-grown e-commerce platform, and
made it scale. Lots of interesting challenges for hackers and a strong
technology focus - improvements to the platform contributed directly to the
bottom line.

Year 2 has a different emphasis. Many of the technical challenges are now past
us. We did such a good job in Year 1 that we don't have to do much WRT
scaling, UX optimization etc in Year 2. Year 2 is more about sales and
marketing - continuing to find channels to acquire members and getting
products into the store that people want (at good prices).

This has much less of a technology emphasis than Year 1, and indeed while Year
1 was very exciting, in Year 2 I find it difficult to motivate my team when
the tasks at hand are things like "ok guys so we need a modification to our
internal admin tool so that marketing can...".

Sure, there are constant improvements to be made. We do regular tweaks. We
think up mini projects ("site looks weird on Android. ok lets fix that this
week"). But the dynamic has most definitely changed and that is just a factor
of the type of company this is (it's a sales company) and the stage of growth
it is at (nearing a B round of financing).

~~~
contextfree
What's much worse is Year 2 of a startup that didn't do so hot on the
technical challenges in Year 1 and is treading water.

------
InclinedPlane
Be careful though. Even when the money, perks, and coworkers are good there
are still serious risks to working at a big company. Certain aspects can make
it a soul crushing endeavor that will burn you out and destroy your motivation
to do anything software related (which can significantly hamper your efforts
to move on to something less soul crushing). This is especially dependent on
your personality. There's a reason why turnover is so high in this industry
and it's not just because people are jumping from awesome experience to even
awesomer experience.

~~~
yesno
I've worked for 2 startups before. Less money, less perks, coworkers can't
cooperate well enough with each other and don't have time to gell.

Startups, at their first year, might be fun. But second and third year are
soul crushing if they don't expand as fast as Twitter or Facebook. Startups
have to keep the bubble strong (i.e.: brainwash) to motivate their employees.
Otherwise, people will feel burn out due to 12-14 hours of working plus
rotation on-call.

Most startups also write hacky code. In the long run, this can decrease moral
of developers.

And you're right, there are reasons why turnover is so high in our industry. I
don't think working for a big company is one of them. I didn't do a formal
research but when I was browsing (re: stalking) in linkedin, the data I saw
showed that people who work for a big company tend to stay longer than those
no-name/small companies.

On the other hand, keep in mind that our industry keeps on building software
to automate a long of manual tasks in a blazing rate. This could also be the
reason why turnover rate is high: layoff due to automation.

------
Dove
The main argument for working at a big company, in my eyes, isn't on the list:

You need a big company to work on a big product.

If you want to work on something as complex, massive, multidisciplinary, and
grand as, for example, the space shuttle, small companies aren't an option.
Sure, you might be called upon to learn fortran, and there will be
underperformers and politics. But the engineering challenges can be mind-
blowing anyway.

I'm reminded of one of the characters in _Snow Crash_ who loved her study so
much she would go _anywhere_ to practice it. Sometimes big companies are like
that. A dead sexy product can make it all worth it.

~~~
plinkplonk
"If you want to work on something as complex, massive, multidisciplinary, and
grand as, for example, the space shuttle, small companies aren't an option.
Sure, you might be called upon to learn fortran, and there will be
underperformers and politics. But the engineering challenges can be mind-
blowing anyway."

Or you could work for a small company like SpaceX and work towards making NASA
obsolete. The same engineering challenges without all the bureaucracy.

~~~
wan23
SpaceX has > 1,100 employees. How small is a small company?

(Source: <http://www.spacex.com/updates.php>)

~~~
bitwize
It's pretty small for an aerospace company.

------
christopherslee
There plenty of poorly run, large companies, that are filled with people that
aren't that smart, bright, or motivated. Many of these companies don't have
great perks, but you might get some job stability out of it.

If you are going to work for a big company, choose wisely.

~~~
thecoffman
While this is excellent advice you could say the same about small companies
too. There are plenty of small companies that are filled with people that
aren't smart, bright, or motivated and that don't have great perks.

If you're going to work at any company choose wisely.

------
brc
I think there's one big thing missing here : the potential to meet future
collaborators. A large company is the ideal place to find other people with
skills and burning desires to do other things. You can find out if they have
these skills by observing their output while someone else is paying. When it
comes time to form your own, you should at least have a good shortlist of
people to invite on board.

~~~
liamk
By that token graduate school is also an excellent place to meet future
collaborators. If you go to a school that is decent, or better, you're
surrounded by very smart and motivated individuals who will be looking for
work within 4 years. You can see them give presentations, read their work,
drink with them at pubs and work together... all good experiences to get to
know them.

~~~
brc
This may be true, but there is a difference between studying together and
working together in a commercial enterprise. I've found the people I studied
with drifted away whereas people I've worked with stick closer by. That, and
people you meet through study all tend to be of the same skillset, whereas
people you meet through work have varied skillsets.

------
mcgraw
It depends on what you value.

The problem with being at a really large company is that it can be extremely
difficult to find any kind of self-worth. You have to try and chase it but
there will be so much red tape at every doorway that you'll have to find some
other way around it. You may be in a huge department. You may be doing stuff
that is only seen internally. You'll spend time hacking to rebuild something
crappy to prove it's value. You're wedged into a system (slowly). The
processes are already set. You'll learn a fair amount of things, but nowhere
near what you'd probably learn at an energetic startup or doing your own
thing.

The absolute best thing will be the people. You'll meet some outstanding
folks... Potentially the kind that want to start something different.

It will be interesting for the first 6 months to a year, and then you'll
become pretty bored. Unless you just don't care and you're riding the wave.

That self-worth thing is a pretty big deal. The majority of people enjoy being
'comfortable.' Finding the comfort that just pays the bills. That's great.
That's where big companies shine. I'd rather chill on the edge being a leader
revolving around building something new. But it took me joining a large
company to learn that.

So, really, just follow you're heart. You'll learn. Nobody can argue that
being a bad thing.

------
byteclub
I especially like point #7: "You get a baseline. Then you go and try to do it
better."

One possible interpretation: "learn as much as you can about your enemy, then
use that knowledge against them." :-)

~~~
patio11
I'd be thinking "learn as much as you can about your customers, who have
virtually infinite amounts of budget relative to your needs and _lots_ of
problems which you don't have because you can program around them in a day."

------
cmoylan
It really depends which large company you work for. My very first job was at
an average large company and it was rather soul crushing. I currently work at
a huge media company that has a terrific work atmosphere/culture. I think the
difference between the two companies was a bankruptcy. The later company went
bankrupt, projects were canceled, the hackers in the room figured they would
be laid off any day and started working on whatever they felt like. Clients
caught wind of what the hackers were developing and started buying in. The
upper management saw all of this and didn't dare mess with it.

------
S_A_P
I worked for a very large company with ties to the Bush administration that
everyone loves to hate.

Here is my take, and I would _never_ want to work at a company of that size
again...

1) I can say I did learn a lot during my tenure there, however, they were such
a huge collection of edge cases that not much was directly applicable to
anywhere else I have worked. I can say that I got a good grasp on not breaking
large complex systems though.

2) I found this to _not_ be the case, and this was very disappointing to me.
When I started there I was expecting to be surrounded by the best and
brightest on a mission. I found that in the case of this company, in my
group(say around 100-150 people) it was 5% of the people doing 95% of the
work, surrounded by people content to do just enough to not get fired.

3) semi true, I do maintain contact with several people there.

4) Perks- NO NO NO NO NO NO!!! Benefits at this place sucked. After I
left(2008) the company suspended raises for everyone for at least 18 months.
While I was able to change titles to a much higher "paygrade", the company did
not want to ever make my salary reflect the title.

5) Probably the biggest reason I never want to work at a large company again.
Most managers were promoted beyond their competency, so decisions were made
based on how much power they could wield and not what was best for the
company. A great example is how they would not allow certain blackberrys to
connect to the enterprise server because one of the managers thought the
scroll wheel was a toy. iPhones were banned because it took > 1 hour to cut
off your access if you were terminated. Thats right folks, exchange/Phone
policy dictated by the fact that the company thinks they will probably fire
you and they cant cut off your access quickly enough.

6) true

7) Absolutely. Im now at a small company(~150 employees) and the lack of all
the crap I mention above has drastically improved my well being.

------
dkarl
Best reason: going home at 6 o'clock and rarely getting called on nights and
weekends unless you volunteer for it.

 _1\. You learn an awful lot. You get to see the good, the bad and the ugly.
You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control) and some not so
good ideas (like how not to motivate people)._

For good ideas, I think this depends on what you mean by "large." A small
company company that has been around for a long time, and possibly grown into
a medium- or large-sized company during that time, acquires a high level of
expertise in its particular problems. It's really an education to see the
technical solutions that emerge from years of accumulated experience in that
kind of environment. However, after companies get really large, they devolve
back towards mediocrity, because the prevailing management mentality is that
technical excellence does not scale. Executives four or five levels away from
the front lines want to feel in control. If they aren't in control, nobody is
in control. If nobody is control, the company drifts aimlessly. And the
executives aren't in control unless the people on the front lines are
predictable and interchangeable. There's a flaw in that logic, but it's
natural for executives to feel that way. Technical excellence (except in the
empty sense that everyone claims) also means that management can't solve
technical problems by itself, because management's only methods for solving
technical problems are managerial: ramp up hiring, hire contractors,
outsource, etc. Empowering management means organizing the company around the
most common technologies, the most common practices, and the most common
quality of developer. From that point of view, technical mediocrity is a
feature, not a bug. There's no need to learn mediocrity first-hand: you can
learn it from books and blogs, and from there you will quickly match or exceed
it.

For bad ideas, I'm probably in the minority here, but I don't think there's
much benefit to seeing ideas fail. Some things are obviously good or bad, and
some things you need to see play out in practice, but in my opinion, the non-
obvious things you need to see play out in practice are usually sensitive to
context and specifics. They might work poorly in a large company but well in a
small company, or poorly in one large company and well in another large
company. Scrum, for instance, turns out to be a poor fit (in my opinion) for
the engineering department I work in. If I try to predict whether Scrum will
or won't work in another situation, however, I will fall back on common sense
unless there are particular parallels to the situation I observed.

 _2\. You get to work with lots of clever people._

Surprisingly true, probably because of the exact reasons he stated. However,
the better the tech economy, the more the best people feel confident leaving.

 _4\. They have lots of perks. I do miss the canteen, the sports gym and the
other 'extras'. And that week's 'training' in Amsterdam at the company's
expense. That was a lot of fun!_

Not always true. Many big companies have no perks at all, or insultingly
crappy ones. Mine won't even provide decent coffee -- we have a bunch of
coffee fiends who simply don't drink coffee at work. It's better to have a
coffee house nearby than to have a company canteen. (Also keep in mind that if
you're a lower-level resource, big companies may compensate for lax
productivity standards by paying more attention to when you're in the office,
which makes it a bad idea to go out for coffee on a regular basis.)

As for training, that depends, too. Sometimes big companies won't pay for any
training except overpriced training in proprietary software, and then only one
or two people get it. You can encounter cases where the company will only pay
for (e.g.) introductory Oracle training, but will only pay for training for
its most senior resources. The introductory training isn't offered to junior
resources, and the company won't pay for advanced training for the senior
resources, so nobody ever gets trained. (And you'll never know whether this is
on purpose, or simply due to stupidity.) I was going to get flown to expensive
official SAP training halfway across the country, but then (thank God) I
managed to avoid working with SAP. Result? No training of any kind for me,
even if it's half the price. Unless I want to get a Master's degree, that is,
in which case I have a lot of leeway. It seems ridiculous that the company
will pay for a Master's degree but won't shell out a thousand bucks for a
conference, but apparently that's not unusual. The rules are often bizarre and
counterproductive.

~~~
Swannie
Re training, yep. Our training budget was seriously mismanaged.

We got a budget every year, but our development manager was too weak to
organise it himself along with his other demands. So it got passed off to a
senior team leader to organise. He didn't really have time to organise it
properly. We went many years where the budget was not spent, and therefore got
_shrunk_ the next year.

When we did finally organise training, it was very basic, and the company gave
us 1.5 days off to study, which included the time to go to the testing centre
(1hr trip each way, 2hr exam). Result: one afternoon off to study. At least I
got Java 1.4 Certified Programmer (yay :-/ ).

The next training was organised the same, only this time, to avoid us all
taking the 1.5 days at the end of the financial year (who'd have thought we'd
do that!?!) training was organised in waves of 3 months. At the end of the 3
months, no one had taken an exam! So guess what? Training materials stayed
with those people for the next 6 months. That was galling for the rest of us.

When I moved department, we had much better managers. They were pro-active is
seeking out our training needs, and everyone knew what training or courses
they would be doing over the next year. Then corporate HQ stole our training
budget to train a team of inexperienced, but geographically cheaper, resources
in our jobs. Surprise surprise we got pissed and started leaving. Now I hear
that little experiment was an abject failure and they were trying to hire us
back as consultants!

 _deep breath_ _sigh_

Hey, I got paid regularly, travelled a fair bit, learned a TON, and did get to
work with some exceptional people. However racism was endemic among senior
management, who were all based in ###### (redacted).

~~~
endtime
Could you, uh, undact the location of the racist managers?

~~~
Swannie
Israel. I should point out almost all of my dealings with Israeli's have been
positive.

However there were consistent appointments of Israeli managers and resources,
where there were far more experienced and capable resources outside of Israel.
Indians were exploited quite badly and rarely considered for any position
above team leader. Within a division promotions would be blocked world wide,
except in Israel, or Israeli's with Israeli bosses.

Conversations would often switch to Hebrew. If you knew a little Hebrew
sometimes you'd figure out they were openly talking about co-workers who were
in the room. The company official language was English, but that did not stop
many internal job postings /requiring/ Hebrew (e.g. Central American on-site
project, Spanish not required, English and Hebrew a must.)

This was not my observation alone, but a general consensus. Whenever it was
raised as an issue, Israeli senior management response was "if you don't like
it, you can leave". Seriously, go look at almost any Israeli company on
Glassdoor etc, and you will find all the same issues again and again.

------
justlearning
1\. You learn an awful lot. \--This is no different from a small company.
Nothing that stands out to be a reason to work for a large company.

2\. You get to work with lots of clever people. \--Are you nuts? A good
percent of large companies are made up of "resources" who chug on the
framework created by few good men(mostly when the team/company was smaller).
Usually an offshore vendor is already established and politicizing the
project.

3\. You become part of a large diaspora/community. \-- The explanation makes
more sense if you are working in a large non-tech company (say Ford,Toyota
plant). But again not a reason that stands out as unique to a Large company.

5\. you learn the art of politics \- You are crushed by the number game (with
equally competent(or otherwise)) competing for promotions, that loving to lick
ass becomes more of survival than a favorite activity.

6\. You have time to reflect. -It is not necessarily slow. It is fast paced
repetitive, enough to numb you.You ponder about the life in general (and get
into depression?) (this doesn't apply to the crowd that join the large company
to live the retired life)

"You might also appreciate the relative security, the calm and the chance to
get your life in order. Once you join a startup, it is generally going to be
permanent 'seats of you pants' mode." -wtf is that about?

7\. You get a baseline. Then you go and try to do it better. -how is this a
reason to work for a large company only.

------
Swannie
When you work in a large company you have to deal with many more people than a
small one.

For example in a small company, if you have issues with pay, you go speak to
the boss/owner, or if you're big enough, the book-keeper/accountant type. In a
large company there will be a whole department for your problem - be it HR
helpdesk, your local accounts/payroll clerk, etc.

In the big company, you should make the effort to learn who is who and what do
they do. You will soon start working out what qualities these people have that
make them great, average, or terrible at their job.

In a small company, if you hire someone with the wrong qualities, at a pivotal
time in your growth, it will be like contracting a disease.

Big company experience shows you lots of mistakes, which can be covered over
by co-workers, PR department, caught by the QA team hour before shipping, etc.
etc. If you don't get exposure to these sorts of mistakes, whilst they may not
kill your startup, they will cause you some big-time stress. Stress in those
quantities is not good for the survival of your business.

You can, however, mitigate some of these risks by having good mentors around,
and hiring smart and experienced staff at the beginning. Successful startups
like Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. didn't survive on hiring graduates alone.
And if they did, they were lucky or smart enough to hire the right people in
the right roles.

------
hasenj
Two things you will learn:

\- How not to do stuff.

\- That you need to get out ASAP to protect your brain from rotting

~~~
maxfridbe
I agree. Our small company which moved at a rapid pace was bought by a large
company. Now because there are like 6 managers looming we can hardly code a
line a day. Rapid paces are great if you actually want to learn your craft.
But if you think your craft has anything to do with office politics, or any of
the other things that you mentioned in this article, I would not want you to
work with me and our company.

~~~
callahad
_if you think your craft has anything to do with office politics_

Ah, but it does. For a business to survive, it has to interact with people
outside of itself. In those cases, understanding the political situation on
the other side of the table can be of immeasurable value.

------
samtp
I don't "need" to do anything.

~~~
taocoyote
Eating? Breathing?

------
canterburry
Big companies let you fail and learn from your mistakes on their dime...which
later helps you succeed on your dime!

------
igrekel
I worked in a few startups before joining a few large companies since then.
The truth is that there is an incredible variety.

Not all large organizations are the same and it may be very different from
department to department. I have worked with people of truly amazing technical
expertise and work ethics in a large organization that relied heavily on heavy
transaction loads. The cost of downtime was know to the minute and many
operations were very sensitive to performance, the contribution of the
technical teams to the business were known and recognized. Everything that was
central to its operation was done in house all the way down to network
protocols. This environment made technical excellence an important aspect of
selecting employees. Less performing employees were moved to other areas of
the business, or just not kept after their probation period.

I have also seen other organizations where you contact your technical team
when you order the coffee for the press conference where you'll announce the
new product they're supposed to build. When technical expertise is not well
regarded; I've seen less talented people. But the machine was still working
thanks to its traditions and established systems, at least if you're attentive
you get to learn how to build resilience. I have done great and exciting work
in startups, I have also seen countless numbers small companies with low
levels of expertise and professionalism.

------
kylec

        most startups reckon you are past it if you are over 23
    

Is this true?

~~~
kmort

      many startups reckon you are too expensive or less likely to work insane hours
      if you are over 23
    

Perhaps.

------
scottkrager
Like most advice in life/money/startups doesn't it really depend?

I've never worked at a big company. I started and mostly failed at my first
venture out of college. 2nd one did well. Never got a real job. Now don't need
a real job, I love the one I've created for myself.

Why should I go work for a big company? To work more hours for little to no
upside?

I can see some advantages....just not enough to make me quit working for
myself.

------
randall
I agree. Having worked at CNET and AOL, the two were like a short-term
intensive training course in working culture. Lots to like, lots to hate, and
all really useful.

That being said I could only stay at either for a short while, because the
lack of progress just doesn't sit well with me.

But, I did like the experience and given the choice to do it all over, would
repeat them.

------
nlavezzo
I started out at a huge professional services firm. I only spent a year there,
but I am really glad for that year. It was an introduction to the harsh
realities of the work world that most people deal with day to day.

The startup that I went to work for afterwards was completely different in
most ways. However, our clients were large enterprises like my former
employer, and I was able to understand the pain many of our client contacts
were going through while trying to do something that was obviously the right
decision for the organization (buying our product) but dealing with red tape,
politics, and morons in the approval process.

Not to mention, if I'd started out in a startup without dealing with the
idiocy and creative vacuum of a behemoth organization, I am sure I wouldn't
have appreciated the opportunity of working in a small, intelligent
meritocracy nearly as much.

------
jonmc12
Some good points - it would be easy to counter, but what I would really like
to see is an empirical study of successful ventures started by founders with a
big company background. That would be a more meaningful way to understand how
the experience translates.

~~~
misham
While not exactly what you asked, here's a Kauffman study
([http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/the-coming-
entre...](http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/the-coming-
entrepreneurial-boom.aspx)) about average age of an entrepreneur. I don't have
a source, but I read another study which showed majority of companies were
started by 30+; this would merit the assumption that most companies are
started by people who worked at other companies, including large corporations.

This rings true since working for other companies allows you to build a
network and find out where the pain points are in different industries.

~~~
_delirium
I wonder if it varies by field? The abstract indicates that most entrepreneurs
are 35+ in that study ("The 20-34 age bracket has the lowest rate of
entrepreneurial activity"), but all the major tech companies I can think of,
at least American ones of the past few decades, were by people under 35:
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, and Dell were all twentysomethings;
Nvidia, Oracle, PayPal, and Cisco were early 30s; and I have to go back to AMD
(founded 1969) to find a 40-year-old cofounder.

I could be totally missing some, but I did just look down a list of biggest
American tech companies to see if I could find anything.

~~~
nostrademons
There seems to be a pattern where you're much less likely to succeed as a
younger founder, but when you do succeed, you're more likely to succeed _big_.

I can think of a few reasons why that might be so. Big companies that change
whole industries tend to be started on the leading edge of sweeping
technological changes (eg. the PC for Microsoft and Apple and Dell, the
Internet for Google and EBay and FaceBook); usually these trends are too minor
for an established career professional to bother looking at. Even if they do
look at them, someone inexperienced has the advantage of looking at them
fresh, without any preconceptions. A large number of the original dot-com bust
companies were started by 30- and 40-somethings, and the bulk of them just
imitated the brick-and-mortar shopping experience or old media experience. It
took someone without industry experience to realize that search would be
bigger than content, and that social networking isn't just media consumption.

------
ams6110
I've worked for big companies with training budgets, lavish perks and
benefits, also for startups that went bankrupt. I learned things in both
situations. You can always learn something in almost any situation, and come
away the better for it in the long run.

~~~
snth
This is true, and I think this is a good attitude to have when you're in a bad
situation. That said, some things are more educational than others, and you
need to think about the opportunity cost of choosing a particular path.

This is how people justify things like learning Latin in high school (which I
did). Sure it helps you learn where English came from and helps you learn
other languages, but surely learning German or French would teach you the same
_and_ you would actually know a useful language.

------
sshah
I just joined a 70 people company from a company with 50K employees
globally....and loving it here.

At my past company I worked on an important module, it was well tested,
everyone loved it. After 2 months it was on the 'path' to be released after 2
months. At this company I worked on something last week and we are looking to
release it in 2 weeks (with enough QA).

People work in mid-small companies. Big companies have smart people but they
get LAZY and eventually the culture builds up on you.

It is important to work for a big company and get exposed to the
culture......as these are the people you might make products for, these are
people who may put money in your company, etc. I would RUN after spending 2
years.

------
far33d
Working for a large but still quickly growing company has been, for me, the
best of both worlds. There's still a lot of upside in stock options and in
career path because of the growth. You get to dabble in politics and you have
a large community of people to learn from and keep in contact with in the
future.

And usually, these companies are not mired in the large and unwieldy
bureaucracy that is common in large and established companies. i.e. companies
like Facebook, Zynga, Google 5 years ago, etc.

However, my experience is limited to two big-but-growing companies, one
startup, and one small but completely dysfunctional. Too small a sample size
for definitive generalization.

~~~
far33d
Followup - if your startup is successful, chances are you're going to end up
working at a big company. Either you will be acquired, or you will grow.

Experience with this can help you be a better entrepreneur.

------
Umalu
I have a hard time with articles like this that generalize over such a broad
and variable base. Some big companies are great, some are terrible, and most
are in between. And once you're in that big company, a lot depends on who you
work for and what your group does, so you'll find that some areas are great to
work in, some are terrible and most are in between.

And what makes this even more infuriatingly variable for the generalizer is
that it is unlikely you and I would even agree on which of these companies, or
departments within companies, are the great or terrible ones. So much depends
on who you are, what you want and what you need.

------
hopeless
I joined a _very_ large software company almost 4 years ago, knowing that it
probably wasn't for me... but you can only know for sure if you try these
things.

As for the stated advantages? I don't see them here. I'm considering starting
the New Year by resigning.

1\. You learn a lot: Yes, I'd agree although what you learn might be a lot of
internal architectures an systems which aren't applicable outside. I'd agree
that you need to experience a big company to get a proper perspective on the
rest of your career though

2\. Smart people: kind of, though there's maybe 10% of the developers here who
even touch a computer outside of work... far less do any sort of personal
programming projects or reading.

3\. Large community: true, I've made good friends here and some international
contacts though I'm not sure they will come to anything. I came from a fairly
lonely road of research/PhD studies and wanted the experience of working in a
team. Unfortunately, my "team" is now mostly remote and, no matter what anyone
says, it's not the same as working with the people in the cubes around you.

4\. They have lots of perks: No! Our company doesn't even provide tea or
coffee. We get health insurance but that's standard for most/all software
companies here. Bonuses are small enough that you can effectively forget about
them. There's no training budget or internal courses (except on internal
processes).

5\. You learn the art of politics: No, not necessarily. I've had a lot more
office politics in the small companies I've worked for. And regardless of the
company, I don't play politics. I'm friendly but not fake, I say what I think
and I do what I say.

6\. Time to reflect: That's part of the reason why I'm still here. The work is
easy, standards are low and hours are flexible (and bosses generally ignorant
as long as the job gets done) so I can work on side-projects in my spare time.
The problem is that the lazy work and general depression at work spills over
into your side-projects. So even though I have the time I've recently lost the
motivation to do much in the way of proper side-project work.

7\. You get a baseline: Exactly. I firmly believe that you can't bitch and
complain about something until you've tried it.

~~~
wahnfrieden
Re: #6, don't you worry that they'll discover your side projects and take
ownership of them / shut them down? Even if it's open-source contributions and
not for profit, it's a liability for the project you contribute to. That's why
some projects make you sign an agreement before accepting commits.

~~~
hopeless
Just to clarify: I don't work on side-projects when I'm in the office, "at
work" or using their equipment. Only at home and on my own equipment.

My contract also states that they understand people do other activities and
the company doesn't want to own them unless they are a competing activity. And
frankly, even if they did want one of my projects they wouldn't do anything
with it and I can move on pretty quickly.

------
joevandyk
I've worked for:

\- a large military contractor \- consulted for many clients who were just
starting their own startup \- a 150 person internet company \- a small 10
person website

I just turned 30 and feel like I've experienced most of the different work
environments out there. I agree with the original article, I think most people
would benefit from spending a few years, maybe right out of college, at a
large company.

At the larger companies, I could spend a month really getting to learn a
language. I wouldn't be able to do that at a startup.

------
wilhelm
All very good points, in line with my own experience. I skipped university and
went to work for a big software company instead. I've transferred internally
half a dozen times in six years, with half of that time spent in management.
I've continually learned new things, and couldn't have got a better education
anywhere.

Now, however, I'm ready to do my own thing. Thanks to the experience I've
gained, I think I'll succeed, too.

------
happywolf
In small companies, you work like Rambo: one person deals with a few products
and wearing different hats. In big companies, you work like a bow in a
machine: you are easily replaceable with someone with similar
qualifications/experiences.

------
GrooveStomp
These are exactly the reasons I ultimately decided to work where I am today. I
think it's worthwhile to reflect on these every now and then, because it's
really easy to lose site of them in face of the politics and daily toil.

------
gleenn
I have every one of these things at my current company and I work at a 100
person company.

------
rsobers
I'm sorry, but I can't take advice from someone whose twitter handle is
@JavaPDF. :)

~~~
markee174
Yes, but my real name is the same as that of Julian Assanges lawyer so JavaPDF
seems a lot safer...

