
Why You Need To Work For A Big Company - codegeek
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/33111/7-Reasons-Why-You-Need-To-Work-For-A-Big-Company.aspx
======
peterwwillis
Some of the things I learned at big companies:

\- Process is not the enemy, inefficient process is the enemy

\- Project Management makes a huge difference

\- Technical people make for bad managers

\- Communication is critical, ego only creates conflict, learn to pick your
battles, don't sweat the small stuff: how to deal with your work and other
human beings

\- Perks are the last thing you should worry about

\- When nobody cares, everything turns to shit

\- Not centralizing/simplifying management of resources makes everything take
a lot longer to get done

\- Salaries are arbitrary and 2 weeks of vacation is total bullshit

\- Health insurance for non-corporate people is expensive

\- Unless you want to fix the same problem twice, do it better the first time

~~~
bluetidepro
> " _Salaries are arbitrary and 2 weeks of vacation is total bullshit_ "

Could you expand more on what you mean by the vacation stuff? Do you mean like
it's total bullshit that you only get 2 weeks? I was not sure how literal to
take that.

~~~
DougWebb
I suspect that's what he meant. In a small company two weeks is often all
you'll ever get, if that much. In a large company you'll start there and
pretty quickly get to three weeks, and if you stay long enough you'll get to
4-5 weeks.

This is in the US, of course. In a humane country you start with 3-4 weeks,
and I think after a couple of years in some European countries you get around
six months of vacation per year ;-)

~~~
khuey
You need to work at better small companies.

~~~
DougWebb
My company is pretty good about vacation time, plus flex time whenever I need
it. I was generalizing.

------
NamTaf
Speaking from a non-IT standpoint (mech engineer, rail industry), BigCo offers
a number of cool benefits that I'd not get working for SmallCo (that may or
may not hold analogous to the IT sector in some cases):

\- Economies of scale #1: when you're purchasing 10,000 instances of
something, people listen and new techniques of doing things become available.

\- Economies of scale #2: Design changes when milking an extra $100 out of the
design or manufacturing process means saving $1m at 10,000 instances. You get
exposure to new design/manufacturing techniques as a result.

\- Project diversity: I could find 20 projects in this office of 150
engineers, all significantly different. They range across design, asset
management, PM work, maintenance/reliability, acquisition, etc. Each applies
to a number of different targets - fixed plant, mobile assets, facilities,
etc. If I grow bored of something I can reasonably rotate to something new and
different within 6 months. More long-term, there's opportunities in multiple
countries if I so wish to pursue them.

\- Institutional knowledge: I can walk in to our drawing room and still find
drawings dated from 1870. Some of the greybeards here seem almost as old, and
come with a huge amount of knowledge (both specific and simply general 'tricks
of the trade') that isn't recorded anywhere.

There's also downsides:

\- Work sometimes feels like it's a game of thrones. The fiefdoms can grow
tiring.

\- Stuff happens slowly. BigCos carry inertia that can be cumbersome.
Counterpoint: inertia can produce some amazing results if you get everyone
paddling in the same direction

\- Career advancement usually requires jumping ship to different companies.
Said greybeards are in it for the long haul and unless a new position opens
up, you're generally stuck below the glass ceiling.

~~~
mattdeboard
Great insight from the physical world. I really liked economies of scale
points.

------
patio11
One reason why one goes to college is to learn how to learn social acclimation
around people wealthier than you are, because this is a useful skill in
convincing them to give you things that you want. A company, and the
decisionmakers thereof, is almost by definition richer than you are, and
broadly representative of an entire class of entities whose behaviors are
totally opaque to you if you've never worked in one (+). That would be
unfortunate, because those entities have budgets and are willing to spend them
on you if you know how to work with them.

\+ People who have never worked in a megacorp often think that their literal
internal decisionmaking model is "MAXIMIZE THE EVIL.", which is both wrong and
will not allow you to successfully predict their behavior.

~~~
svmegatron
Are there one or two things you would recommend to help bridge that
communication gap between a solo person and a megacorp? One thing I've
observed (possibly incorrectly!) is that megacorps seem to "like" to do
business with other megacorps.

~~~
patio11
Rule #1: all megacorps are, like Soylent Green, made out of people. If you
want to sell something to Microsoft, you aren't selling it to Microsoft,
you're selling it to one or a few identifiable people within Microsoft. The
entity we think is Microsoft is the sum of the emergent behaviors of lots of
little Microsoftite particles which are bouncing around in Brownian motion.

After you understand that, it's VASTLY easier to get Microsoft to give you
money, and you might find that Microsoft (or whatever BigCo) you're dealing
with considers More Money Than I've Ever Dreamed Of (TM) to be a fairly
routine decision, in the same manner that you might decide to purchase a new
keyboard.

In terms of communication style: learn to talk to business people. ROI and TCO
over TDD and DRY, PowerPoint decks over README.md in your Github projects,
wearing a suit when appropriate instead of making fun of people who own one,
etc etc. It's really not hard to learn how to talk like someone if you listen
attentively. You've done this your entire life in other contexts and other
communities. Decisionmakers at BigCo are not intrinsically a more hostile
audience than, e.g., your local freestyle rap club meetup thing, the rhymes
are just different, yo. [1]

[1] I should stick to WoW metaphors, but you get the general idea.

~~~
bobbles
It should be noted that 'wearing a suit' is not just wearing your normal
thinkgeek t-shirt with a suit jacket over the top.

------
mikestew
Say what one will about Microsoft, I probably learned more there than anywhere
else. Source control and how to branch/merge at scale. How to work cross-team
relationships. How to work with people much smarter than I'll ever be. How to
do a little political wrangling when necessary, and a bunch of other things
I've probably forgotten.

Having worked at several small companies since, it's disappointing how often I
get to watch teams find out the hard way why things are done this way, or not
that way. Sure, I will point out the potential folly along the way, but few
care to hear it, and instead wish to invent their very own wheel because their
case requires a special kind of roundness.

~~~
marssaxman
It sounds like our experiences at Microsoft could hardly have been more
different. Virtually everything I learned at Microsoft could be filed under
"whatever you do, no matter how desperate you are, never do it this way". The
systems were unreliable, inefficient when they worked, and the number of
person-hours routinely wasted on tool management was staggering. The culture
was unhealthy, competitive and individualistic, sometimes to the point of
hostility. You saw cross-team communication, I saw at least a quarter of every
working day wasted in routine status meetings, in which two or three of the
ten or twelve people present spent an hour making a couple of decisions while
the rest of us tried not to look too bored...

Of course Microsoft is a big place and different divisions work differently.
I'll never take the risk of landing in such a mess again, though.

~~~
megrimlock
> I saw at least a quarter of every working day wasted in routine status
> meetings, in which two or three of the ten or twelve people present spent an
> hour making a couple of decisions while the rest of us tried not to look too
> bored..

That sounds horrible. Did you mention your concerns to the people who owned
those meetings, in a way that made it clear you were trying to help improve
them?

I've had success several times with this in BigCo, with various satisfactory
outcomes:

1\. "You're right, this meeting is BS! But it has to happen for various
reasons X Y Z -- since you don't care about this area you don't need to come,
we'll grab you if we need you."

2\. "You're right, and other people feel tuned out as well, so let's try
cutting it to 10 minutes / mailing out an agenda beforehand / starting exactly
on time."

3\. "You're right, this is an inefficient way to gather state so we're going
to just swing by each person 1-on-1."

4\. "You're right, this team is too big so we're splitting in 2/3 smaller
groups"

~~~
marssaxman
No, I never did. It just seemed to be an accepted part of the institutional
culture, and I felt like fighting against it would have only made me look like
a complainer. Maybe someone with more status could have tried it, but I was
just a newbie and nobody seemed to care what I thought.

I think the project I worked on was worse than average because it was the sort
of cross-cutting change that affected a lot of different teams - six different
products, I think? There were a _lot_ of PMs involved.

~~~
bobbles
I'd just like to add that pointing out seemingly mundane things like these are
what allowed me to move from engineering into the consulting team at my
company (which is what I wanted).

It's worth testing the waters a few times. You'll know pretty quickly if they
value your input, and if not you can decide if you want to continue working
for them.

------
OhHeyItsE
Gah. Sorry, No. My experience has been the opposite.

In particular:

"You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control)" \- you mean the
group that still uses VSS 4.0 on a network share b/c they're terrified of
moving their repo to Git (or even SVN)?

"You get to work with lots of clever people" \- no, you get to work with
people who work there for no reason other than they live close to the office
and have spent the last 14 years building an impenetrable fortress around
themselves.

"They have lots of perks" \- Yes, that one day a year I got to donate $5 to
cancer research so I could wear bluejeans (collared shirt still, of course)
makes it all worth it. I'll take my catered breakfasts, lunches, impromptu
beer runs, work-from-anywhere policy and unlimited vacation days, thank you.

"You are not going to be sent on that week-long training course on using
Oracle or have your part-time MBA fully-funded while at that boot-strapping
startup." \- Ok, starting to think this is a case of Poe's law in action...

Yeah startups (and small companies) come with their share of headaches, but
I'll take it any day over the soul-crushing, creativity-stifling cubicle hell
that is a big company.

~~~
jmduke
A few retorts (I work for Big Tech):

 _" You see lots of very good ideas (like proper source control)" \- you mean
the group that still uses VSS 4.0 on a network share b/c they're terrified of
moving their repo to Git (or even SVN)?_

Unsurprisingly, companies that have millions of lines of code have to take
extra precautions.

 _" You get to work with lots of clever people" \- no, you get to work with
people who work there for no reason other than they live close to the office
and have spent the last 14 years building an impenetrable fortress around
themselves._

This is a lazy dismissal.

In reality -- lots of smart people work at big companies and small companies.
That being said, big companies will invariably have more people dedicated to
research than startups. Microsoft Research alone has over a hundred people
just doing brilliant things.

 _" They have lots of perks" \- Yes, that one day a year I got to donate $5 to
cancer research so I could wear bluejeans (collared shirt still, of course)
makes it all worth it. I'll take my catered breakfasts, lunches, impromptu
beer runs, work-from-anywhere policy and unlimited vacation days, thank you._

Again, this is lazy and untrue -- unless you want to say that Facebook and
Google's perk packages are about wearing bluejeans -- but I think playing the
perks game is silly anyway. Distilling things down to money (with some
exceptions, like WFH) is always the smarter way to go.

\---

Personally, I think the biggest difference working at a big company vs. a
small one is that of depth vs. breadth. At a startup, its not beyond the realm
of possibility to understand the majority of the code base: you'll be wearing
lots of different hats, doing lots of things at once. At a big company, the
organization is usually such that you'll spend your entire employment working
on one little niche -- this has its advantages (you become an expert at that
one thing) and disadvantages (you're only an expert at that one thing, after
all).

Personally, I can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to just spend time at
both types of companies and see which one they like more.

~~~
OhHeyItsE
Fair enough. Of course, I am only drawing on my own anecdotal experience.
However, the big companies you mentioned above, Facebook, Google, and
Microsoft - I would propose that they are truly exceptional in "big company"
culture. Like one-in-a-million exceptional.

Perhaps my experience in each world was exceptional, but I have a feeling they
were rather typical.

~~~
sokoloff
Those three being "1 in a million" implies that there are three million big
companies.

------
kyllo
The main difference between working for a big company vs. a small company is
that the roles tend to be explicitly defined and specialized at a big company.
You don't need/get to wear as many hats as you will at a small company or a
startup. Basically, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades / "full stack"
developer, you might become an expert on one layer of a huge technology stack.
This can be good, or bad, or mixed. There is more formal training and you can
get deeper knowledge, but it's harder to get broad knowledge. It can be hard
to change roles or try new things. Generally, I think learning "full stack" is
preferable when you're young, and specializing might be better as you get a
little older.

~~~
DougWebb
I worked for a fairly big company (100+ employees pre-acquisition) and I was
able to develop a very broad role. I started as just a web UI developer, but
soon helped design the deployment architecture of our entire runtime system
and throughout my tenure I designed and implemented many of the services
within that architecture. That included everything from DB schemas, custom XML
databases, authentication servers, several mid-tier servers/services, as well
as always being the lead owner of the UI.

What helped, I think, is that I was part of a small team in that big company.
At peak we probably had about two dozen programmers, with 8-10 on my team.
That's not much bigger than the team I'm on now in a tiny company where I also
get to work end-to-end.

I disagree with specializing as you get older: there's going to be a tendency
to do that, but it's the last thing you want to do. Never stop learning, never
stop broadening your skillset. Sooner or later you're going to be a 40+ year
old developer looking for work, and if you're a specialist you're going to be
looking for a long time. As an experienced developer with a proven track
record of adaptability you'll be able to justify the salary that you're going
to want/need.

~~~
ramchip
IMHO 100 people isn't a big company at all... two dozen programmers can still
comfortably fit in a room and know eachother. My current company has 200k
employees, we spend a large amount of time just looking for whoever is
responsible for something...

~~~
DougWebb
When we got acquired we became much, much bigger. Depending on how you counted
divisions you could come up with anywhere between 50 to hundreds of
developers. A few of our projects involved developers coordinating across
those divisions, but when I left they were still fairly independent most of
the time.

------
obeleask
I think the article misses on all the biggest benefits I had working at a
BigCo:

1) You can actually get to work with a lot of companies. We acquired a ton of
companies over the years, and I'd often go work in those companies post
acquisition while it was still being run as a separate company. So these were
smaller companies that were generally successful - you got to see a lot of
different practices.

2) Once you are done learning a new job/role (or new company as above), you
can easily get the opportunity to move to around to different departments or
jobs. I personally did consulting, product management, engineering,
architecture, sales operations and strategy (sometimes for the mothership,
sometimes for the acquired companies).

3) It's not about smart people I wouldn't say - its about mentors. At a small
company, there are just less senior people around, and they are often more
focused on delivering. At a big company, more senior execs are really willing
and able to mentor the superstars in their teams that make them look good. You
combine that with moving about companies or departments, and you get a mix of
different mentors with different styles and strengths.

4) It won't apply to everyone, but I personally must have evaluated 50 - 100
companies for M&A or partnerships. I know exactly how to analyze a business,
where to look for skeletons, what works well/what doesn't, what a big company
will look for (and what are red flags) in an acquisition, when you can/can't
get a partnership and what you can use to your advantage in negotiations, etc.
Will all be extremely useful skills when you're on the other side of the
table.

Between the above things, you can learn so much. Stuff like the food/work
environmental is so irrelevant compared to this.

Don't get me wrong - I have no intentions of ever going back to a big company
again. But these were the big benefits for me.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I think you were fortunate, perhaps exceptionally so, in your experiences -
few people will get to move around as much as that.

------
zwieback
I worked at startups before joining megacorp. I always thought I wouldn't like
working at a big company but everything the author said resonated with me. At
some point I can see myself going back to a smaller outfit but for now it's
great.

What the author doesn't mention and what I perceive as a great plus are the
tools and infrastructure I get to enjoy. We've got a lot test equipment,
machine shops and technicians a smaller shop couldn't afford.

On the other hand, I keep hearing managers say "we have to be nimble, like a
startup". I think that's exactly the wrong approach, big companies should
approach big problems that startups can't tackle.

------
snorkel
The biggest big company problem is the lack of focus slows everything down.
The ability to execute is there, but the focus is not. Start ups will attempt
to manage 20 products and services at once, and that feels like too much,
where big companies attempt to launch 200 new products, 80 new services, 40
special partnerships, 750 pet projects, 380 special events, 30 broad
initiatives, plus the CEO mandate of the week ... all while maintaining
support for 3100 legacy products and acquisitions ... the result is everyone
is very busy yet unfocused. Too much context switching at all levels, too many
works in progress get blocked on waiting for other teams to contribute their
part.

Second challenge of big companies: trying to keep up with all of the latest
project code names which change on a weekly basis.

------
robbyking
I guess it depends on your definition of "large." I worked at a large company
(20k+ employees), and each department was like its own dysfunctional 50 person
company: nothing got done, the technology was stale, and the perks were
minimal.

I work at a medium-sided company now (~200 employees according to Wikipedia),
and I love it. We have a great mix of technology and perks, and are all
treated really well. I worked at a handful of start-ups during the first tech
boom (and during the crash), and some were exceptional and some were meh.

I wouldn't rule out working at another start-up sometime in the future; it
would just be one of the many factors I consider.

~~~
AndyNemmity
It depends more on the company than the size.

I work for a company with over 60k employees and the technology is incredible,
and the people are interesting and super smart.

------
mikeash
Normally I'd just let a post like this go, but that word "need" really rubs me
the wrong way. No, I don't _need_ to work for a big company, ever. I haven't
yet, and don't ever plan to do so. Go away.

I learn an awful lot? Because I can't learn things otherwise? Come on.

I get to work with lots of clever people? No problem doing that now.

Large community? Ditto.

Perks? Uh... how does that translate to "need"?

You learn the art of politics. Great! What you're saying is, I _need_ to work
for a big company so I can learn something that's only useful when working for
a big company. What?

You have time to reflect? Why assume that all small companies are balls-to-
the-wall, 100-hour-week, venture-funded, Valley startups? Oh right, because
this post comes from a fantasy world where the only two kinds of companies are
gigantic Googles and tiny places filled to the brim with foosball tables, not
actually the Earth where I live.

You get a baseline? What is this I don't even.

~~~
product50
You haven't worked in a big company so not sure if you are even qualified to
comment on this post in such language. If you previously had the experience in
working for a bigger company and then mentioned these things - your comment
would have been a lot more credible.

You don't know know what you are missing till the time you experience it.
Dharmesh Shah is one of the more acclaimed entrepreneurs in the industry and I
do believe his words more than someone who doesn't even know what it feels
like working in an environment he is commenting on.

~~~
mikeash
It would be nice if you could tell me what I got wrong instead of just saying
I'm not "qualified" to comment. Maybe we just have different ideas of what the
word "need" means. I've managed to go three decades and change without this,
and don't see any obstacles to continuing. To me, that means I don't "need"
it. I don't need to work for a big company to see that.

I have no idea who Mr. Shah is and don't really care. I am criticizing the
article, not the author.

------
InclinedPlane
The biggest reason to work at a big company is that you can have an
opportunity to work on "stuff that matters" fairly quickly and you get
introduced to ways of dealing with processes around working with important
things, which can give you skills and confidence you might not otherwise
attain.

You're not going to acquire the experience of knowing what it's like to jump
headfirst into fixing a build break during the runup to release on a billion
dollar product unless you're working at a company that has a billion dollar
product, of course.

------
lifeisstillgood
Rubbish

Every CxO at every large company looks at startups as _the_ model to emulate -
lean, focused, full of feedback.

The benefits listed, every single one, are examples of overlooked, hidden or
inefficient practises by the large company - practises they try hard to
eliminate.

Do you think the CEO of Megacorp thinks that weeks "training" in Amsterdam was
a good use of his money? Do you think he realises there are good passionate
people trying to do good on no budget. If he found out he would either give
them a budget or fire their arses for working in the wrong things.

As for your time for reflection ... screw that, reflect at home.

No - big companies are trying very hard to stop being a source of "informal"
VC money, rest stops for the tired and weary or uncontrolled cash spenders.

One day they might succeed.

~~~
VladRussian2
i've recently spotted in the wild the latest mutation of the beast - "lean 6
sigma".

10 years ago we had "6 sigma" pandemic in the Valley, last 5 years - "lean"
and now ... behold their monsterous progeny.

~~~
arkades
As a current Lean Black Belt and 6Sigma Green Belt working in QI... I cannot
agree with you more.

Still, some people just can't look at a rubric to help you organize your
thoughts/analysis without dropping to their knees and worshiping it as the
second coming of Christ.

Lean, 6S, TQM, CQI, not a single one of them has conclusively been shown to
actually work long-term (post-6 months). But, on the bright side, it's a
fantastic job for getting to see every last corner of operations in an
organization. I'm using the position to learn the pain points of my preferred
field, before going into start-up land to address their needs.

------
zw123456
Over the years I have worked for both, much of what the author said is true,
there are many things that are great about working for a start up,I would be
preaching to the choir to mention them here. The one thing that got left out
is the access to resources. Some of the projects I have worked on, just due to
the scale, would have been impossible to do at a start up level, they just do
not have access to that kind of capital usually. There are some things that
are just too big to do that way.

------
ExpiredLink
8\. You work on really large applications and projects. This is completely
different from working on small projects.

------
johnbenwoo
You also learn what kinds of unmet needs there are in the marketplace. You
learn how decisions are made, who the gatekeepers are, how budgets are
allocated, and what frustrations exist with the current roster of vendors -
not to mention building your network and credibility in the industry. Want to
develop a product/service to sell to the ______ industry? Go work there for a
year or two first.

------
brianmcconnell
The author's point isn't that big companies are better, just that it's a good
experience to have. I worked for a public company post acquisition and it was
a great learning experience (some good lessons, some "don't do it this way"
lessons, but overall good). I wouldn't want to make a career working for big
companies, but I think you're better off as a business person if you end up in
one from time to time.

Now if you want some definitive advice on where not to work. Don't work for a
husband and wife operated company, ever. There you will encounter the worst
aspects of a lifestyle business combined with nepotism (especially the
unfireable but totally incompetent spouse).

Otherwise spend some time in a combination of startups and big companies. Both
have their strong points, and remember 90% of startups fail, so its not as if
startupland is nirvana.

~~~
edandersen
Never work for someone else's lifestyle business, ever.

------
steven777400
The biggest difference that appears to me is the lifetime and size of
applications. I work on applications that have existed for a decade (and
that's short, among our various application teams). Many of our applications
are hodge-podged mixes of legacy and more modern technology.

Whenever we "rewrite" an application that has outlived any possibility of
keeping it alive, we can't start from scratch: we have to continue meeting all
existing customer needs. So even from day one designs are often bloated and
frustrating. There is no "MVP".

Meanwhile at a startup you can "move fast and break things", and when an
application starts to get stale either it can go away, or you can switch to
another startup and begin fresh.

------
rhokstar
Had my own startup. Brought my lessons into a large company. Worked wonders as
a result and proud to work with them. To this day, still learning a lot.

------
paulbjensen
It's a valuable experience, but can be a very frustrating one to go through,
especially if the company has internal power battles and little appreciation
for the importance of technology.

~~~
AndyNemmity
Same can be said of startups, it's not really big company specific.

~~~
avelis
It can be said in general: If there is a lack of technical expertise or value
for any company, expect much frustration.

------
wf
> _" And you will get a range of ages - let's face it, most startups reckon
> you are past it if you are over 23."_

What? Not to disparage people my own age but that seems like hyperbole. Is
this the image most people have of startups? Fresh out of college at 23 (a few
months ago) I couldn't even find a decent startup (that I wanted to work at*)
that was offering positions to new grads.

------
nness
The thing to remember about "big companies" is that they don't just
spontaneously come into existence at that size; with x-thousand employees,
y-percentage of market share, and z-millions of revenue. They are grown, over
years or decades, because they've done something right.

Worth keeping in our minds when discussing such topics, before passing them
off as competitive or cultural failures.

------
johnkchow
Politics is one of the most valuable lessons learned at a big company.
Although I work in a small startup, all the management is from big companies.
Like any other startup, what's valued the most is getting stuff done. But I
learned that shouting at the top of your lungs or bottling your emotions while
being passive aggressive are the worst strategies in leading discussions.

I had to quickly learn how to present my argument in a non-confrontational
way, get individual buy-in (and perspective) from all stakeholders before any
meeting, and balance being transparent and forthright versus protecting your
interests (it really helps that your interests aligns with company goals!).

To sum it up, "politics" IMO has made me a more effective leader.

------
saintx
I sincerely recommend working at a large University as an alternative to this.
Instead of one large company it is a constellation of large companies. They
are almost always desperate for more good talent, and in many cases the
innovations you can bring to the table can benefit the entire community, not
just shareholders and customers. Otherwise, all of these points hold true.

------
mathattack
There are things to be learned at big companies, but it is very bad to say X
is right for everyone.

Big companies have been good for: \- Providing training \- Formalizing
feedback \- Introducing me to a lot of people

But they also: \- Stifle career progression ("We have you doing X, so we are
sorry that you can't help on Y") \- Are not nearly as safe as their size would
suggest \- Tolerate mediocrity

------
varelse
You'll _probably_ make more money at a large company than at a startup unless
you get in with single digit or better equity and you get lucky.

Other than that, I prefer the creative chaos of startups to the process and
tools over interactions and individuals of large companies (even the ones that
pretend they're _agile_ )...

------
Yhippa
I really grok this article. One thing that I found was that after learning to
navigate office politics I really didn't like it. I made it a point in
subsequent jobs to get a feel for what politics are like and if they seemed to
be too toxic to avoid the company.

------
iblaine
The point of the article is to say everyone should have experience working at
a large company to get perspective. The same thing can be said for small
startups. The debate over which is better is endless and childish.

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elliottbell
You get to work with smart people? How is that unique to bigger companies? In
fact, I'd say it's more unique to smaller companies, that have to be more
selective with their hiring process.

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SkittlesNTwix
This is exactly how people rationalize the story of how they became "trapped."
And learning politics is nothing to be proud of or to seek out.

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slash-dot
Not a very credible source seeing that onstartups.com is run by a co-founder
of Hubspot, which is starting to become a rather big company.

