Being to a FAANG company (I worked for the F and the G) gives one a view of colossal tech stacks, …

IME there is a code quality/sanity valley of death between about 50-1000 people, with the lower bound shifting upwards a bit depending on the maturity of the company's founding/early stage technical contributors. You get more bang for your buck with five of the right people than 50 of the wrong ones in the early stages, and sometimes that determines five years later whether you are drowning in tech debt (bad) or 1000 years ahead of the competition (inefficient, probably) or maybe just barely staying one step ahead of the reaper (optimal, probably). But a lot of companies limp into the valley, get enough revenue to stay alive for a while, and then slowly fade into obscurity the second a nimbler competitor shows up on the scene and eats their lunch. That's why small companies are fun. All that visible impact and you know you won't be mired in the bureaucratic death spiral of a medium-sized…

I've worked at the G and hated it. It was too big and agree 100% with your analysis. Money and benefits are great, especially considering how little work is actually expected of you (compared to smaller orgs). I enjoyed always being able to find someone who knew more than me, which opened up really good learning opportunities. But as you said, good luck getting any of your accomplishments noticed. Your direct manager would notice and you hope they write the right kinds of letters and accolades to other people to notify them, but that's about all you can ask for. I've also been at small startups. I worked somewhere early in my career where I was employee #5 and stayed there until we were about 70 employees. It was exciting and I can say humbly that I touched essentially every feature and decision that happened during those ~3 years, which can be rewarding. I'm not saying I personally buil…