Ask HN: What are some pros/cons of working for big/small companies? - diehunde
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AwesomeFaic
Currently working at big (>25,000 global staff) company, with professional
history of small (<200) companies

Big pros: Better work-life balance, slower pace, opportunities to switch roles
internally, great benefits, stable pay, strong career move.

Big cons: Occasionally frustratingly slow due to processes, harder for upward
movement past a certain point, impossible to adopt newer tech due to internal
restrictions

Small pros: Exciting day-to-day, younger and more enthusiastic employees, get
to work on cutting/bleeding edge tech, more opportunities to really stand out.

Small cons: Atmosphere largely dictated by boss' mood, volatile and
unpredictable work life, worse work-life balance, greater pressure to keep up
or get out, worse pay and benefits.

Based in Northeast US, not New York.

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bryanrasmussen
big company cons -

can't get anything done quickly because there are processes in place to make
sure you don't do things maliciously or just mess up.

boring long meetings that are nearly incomprehensible.

you are not allowed to go work on anything that you can do that the company
has decided is not in the skill-set they want you to exercise therefore your
skills atrophy.

someone else has made the choice how you should solve a problem, and that
choice is idiotic in your opinion.

target for attack to shut down your systems

big company pros -

generally great food cheap.

generally pension, bonuses, insurance.

small company cons -

since no processes in place to keep people from doing stupid things sometimes
someone does something stupid and everything is ruined.

sometimes moving to fast and breaking too many things so no time to stop and
talk about what you are doing.

you will have to go outside your skill-set to get things done which is
stressing.

small company pros -

probably your choice how you want to do anything.

sometimes there is the idea that you will build the small company into a big
company which can be exciting.

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marm7
I usually see them like this and these are my “pain areas”.

Big company Slow, lots of complex processes to follow, good pay, lots of
budget to do changes

Small company Fast, not many processes, more flexible Pay = low to average,
every penny counts

