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Maybe true, but my experience in big companies has been complicated.

1 - Less than stellar people, aiming for the bare minimum

2 - Crappy tools and procedures (like not having administrator priviledges on your machine), or using an old Unix (not Linux) with VI. Hard to get motivated with that

On the other hand they have money for shiny toys (like very good test equipment), so there's that as well.




I've worked for both startups and big companies. Both suck. Big companies have more money and process. Small companies have more flexibility but almost no process.

So, for example, if I work for massive XYZ bank, it's most likely that no code is going to get promoted without being thoroughly tested, discussed, multiple meetings and approvals, and then implemented by an actual team of people in charge of making sure the servers don't break. Of course, this means that it takes a LONG time to promote even simple changes and there is a world of politics involved with a bunch of agendas.

If I work for startup XYZ, I can promote right to prod without anyone asking what I'm doing or why I'm doing it at 3 pm in the afternoon. Of course, that also means several other developers might be doing the same thing. Your manager might be pushing code that breaks your code, and then telling the founders it was you.

For me, neither is good, but at least in a big company I get paid more, there is a structure in place that people have to follow (in general) and I can spend my free time working on my own projects. In a small company, you ARE the company but just like with the big company, you don't actually own anything...you are just on call all of the time and are paid less.

I have friends who prefer startups, it really boils down to which things you value more.


If your experience was in Financial Tech, you likely had the very worst experience in "Big Company" you can imagine.

I worked at Wells Fargo, where they had laughable procedures and couldn't even properly staff teams because they refused to value their tech workers at even a bare minimum.

Now I'm at Google and its completely the opposite. A lot of healthy code management behavior, flexibility to design and develop new projects, lower maintenance management etc.

In between I ran a startup where I'd like to think I created the most process that was needed and nothing more, while personally managing my engineers by deeply valuing their opinion and only providing them with direction based on product strategy & design.


There are some startups out there that are more in between. I've had the good fortune to work at two such places.

One nice thing as mentioned in the article is that you have more responsibilities at startups. If you have the intelligence and drive, this can help you with your career immensely. Personally, I have learned a huge amount at the startups I have worked in, many things that larger companies probably would have taken a lot longer before putting trust in me to do.

It is all individual dependent of course.


"Big company" and "startup" are not homogenous categories. I've worked for Big Companies that are slow and plodding and I've worked for startups that are as nimble and quick as lightning. But I've also worked for extremely nimble Big Companies and startups that couldn't make anything happen and were mired in a giant pile of technical debt and process.




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