Ask HN: Starting career at a small or large company?

[infinitebattery]

Hello Hacker News! I'm a senior in a small midwestern college studying computer science, deciding where I want to go for my last internship (likely where I will end up full time).

I know a lot of software engineers browse HN and I wanted to crowdsource advice. My career goal is to be a senior software engineer / engineering manager in 5-10 years from now. I'm facing two choices - one is a small company (~50 employees) in the financial media space. The other is a large N-tier bank (think Chase, BOA, C1).

I think this comes down to the tradeoffs between large companies and small companies. Being specific to starting careers, do you think one is better than the other?

[jppope]

Start at a big company. The brand recognition will get you more interviews in the future, and Big companies hire a lot of people... which if you're spry will allow you to build a decent network (effectively alumni). Of course the work is significantly less stimulating and if you have an entrepreneurial spirit you'll be progressively more bothered by the bureaucracy (as a gross generalization), but generally the tradeoffs are worth it for ~2-3 years