I have worked for mega-companies via acqui-hire and I feel like my preference is based in solid …
… I have worked for mega-companies via acqui-hire and I feel like my preference is based in solid experience. I’ve never hired into a company with more than 30 employees in my 30+ years as a developer and probably never will. My current gig is now grown well into the size range where I frequently am reminded why I don’t like bigger companies :(
I think employees treat startups more and more like a jumping pad to get to their ultimate goal of work for Fang. There's no point staying at startups when working at a big tech will yield more money in the long term. I don't blame them though. Look at how startups are run nowadays, all the potential upside has been sucked dry by VCs.
I used to 100% agree with this, but now I realize that smaller companies have different issues that can make the experience as bad as larger ones, and you gotta learn to compartmentalize the same way.
In the end this is just a job, and we should focus on what's best for ourselves. This is possible and necessary with both large and small employers.
Big companies build new things all the time. And you can easily join a startup which is several years old and has massive tech debt that you are stuck cleaning up. So I don’t think wanting to build new stuff from the ground up necessarily means a startup is best.
Knowing everyone you work with is certainly nice. At big companies you usually work as part of a team of, say, 8-12. And depending on your role and level you might rarely interact with others. At a startup you might have to talk to customers or other partner companies. So I wouldn’t even say it’s universally better in that way.
I do think a big benefit of startups is it’s much easier to get a sense of ownership for what you are doing which generally leads to more job satisfaction. Feeling like a mere cog can be demoralizing.