Working for a Big Company versus Small Business

In My Humble Opinion
1

In my career as an IT person, I’ve worked in a variety of small companies (less than 100 people) and large corporations (more than 50,000 people). What kind of company do you prefer working with? Here are my pros and cons:

Small Company Pros:

  1. Get to do a lot of different things
  2. More personal
  3. Make closer friends with your coworkers

Cons:

  1. Tons of work, you have to do everything
  2. Less opportunities to learn new things
  3. Less pay

Big Company Pros:

  1. More opportunity to move around and learn different things
  2. Pay is usually better
  3. You usually don’t have to work as hard

Cons:

  1. Impersonal, you probably only really get to know you’re immediate team members
  2. It’s really easy to get pigeon-holed and stuck doing one kind of thing

Overall, I think I prefer the small shops over the big corporations if I could get paid the same amount. What’s your preference?

2

I work for a small (45 employees) firm (family owned)
Pros: Family-like atmosphere. Boss a friend. Flexible scheduling. Pay actually pretty good. They give me a lot of leeway as long as my work gets done.
Have worked for bigger concerns, I won’t go back for any price (that I’ve been offered yet)

3

I’ve worked for many small companies (start-ups) and a few larger companies (Fortune 100), and as you say there are pluses and minuses to each… I prefer the intimacy of a small company as opposed to the “security” of a large company… although it seems that job security is a thing of the past these days.

4

Small business:

  • opportunity to rise through the ranks quickly if it grows;
  • often a more friendly, informal atmosphere;
  • more opportunity to get involved in multiple activities;
  • generally less job security;
  • often less opportunity for training or further qualifications;
  • may involve investment of long hours and personal sacrifice;
  • may be stuck with people you hate!

Big business:

  • more training opportunities;
  • may offer internal moves to new roles and positions;
  • better opportunity to develop “corporate” skills for a CV;
  • generally more job security;
  • generally better pay and conditions;
  • often better dispute resolution procedures;
  • “small cog in a big wheel” isolation;
  • may need to compete ruthlessly for management attention;
  • less of an opportunity to become indispensible or make a name.
5

Having been there I can offer the following advice:

Avoid the worst-of-all-world situation: a small company owned by a large corporation.

6

Having experienced working with a very small company (5 emlpoyees) I might note that there are minuses of being “like family” to your boss. Namely, sometimes you’re treated like a wayward 16 year-old. Kinda makes me appreciate being the cog in the great machine I am now.

7

I, too, work for a very small company (7 people or so). There are definite minuses to being “like family.” I doubt I’ll ever be taken as seriously as I’d like by the primary shareholders as we’ve known each other for years and their opinions of who I am are outdated and apparently don’t change very much.