[car love]

This is a tale of two people i know personally at a very close level. These two gentlemen are friends too. Both are in their late 50s now. One joined a startup company that was run in a small building near my place around 25 years back because he liked the vibe and was just starting out. The other person (also starting out) did not want to risk it and joined a large well established firm.
Surprisingly what happened was that the big established company ran into trouble and wound up. The person then jumped ship, was employed in various companies and has now retired after a life of being employed in various firms. A pretty normal life.
The other guy is now, easily worth north of 100 Crores, has all imaginable toys and is now also retired. He stayed with that small company and did not budge. That small company is INFOSYS.

Moral: Life is strange and unpredictable.

[AlphaKilo]

Originally Posted by car love

...
Surprisingly what happened was that the big established company ran into trouble and wound up. The person then jumped ship, was employed in various companies and has now retired after a life of being employed in various firms. A pretty normal life.
The other guy is now, easily worth north of 100 Crores, has all imaginable toys and is now also retired. He stayed with that small company and did not budge. That small company is INFOSYS.

Moral: Life is strange and unpredictable.

Unfortunately (I am not saying you do), a lot of our fellow humans measure the success of a person by the net worth he has at the end of the career and fail to see the human side of it. As long as, one does what he is happy with (includes going beyond one's own comfort zone etc etc) and what he really loves doing, I would term him a successful person in life, irrespective of how much millions of net worth or cars or houses he has or does not have at the end.

To me a career is something where one does the following:

1. Does what he loves and this starts with learning what he likes to or what he is really good at. Not all elephants can swim to the depths of the great oceans and not all fishes can walk on land.

2. Contributes to the betterment of the whole world (in any form).

3. Could run his family or himself without having to be dependent on others for his basic needs.

4. Could enjoy the life with all the creature comforts he/she deem necessary for themselves and not by some general standard where owning an S-Class is considered the pinnacle of success (for example).

5. Leaves behind something for the next generation to pick up from.

[car love]

Originally Posted by AlphaKilo

Unfortunately (I am not saying you do), a lot of our fellow humans measure the success of a person by the net worth he has at the end of the career and fail to see the human side of it.

Fully agree with you. Unfortunately the world rates a person by money alone which is fundamentally wrong. A case in point is our mega rich neighbor who moved in few years back while we are there in the locality for more than a generation. Now people refer us as "his" neighbor which actually should have been the other way around!!

[haisaikat]

I believe it also depends on your immediate teams and the environment and culture you get into. This plays a lot of things at the back of your mind that controls your acceptance of the company. If you are joining lower to mid levels, this is all that matters, rest up to you how you learn and skill yourself, irrespective of the company size. If you get noticed its a mark of success, if not then also the learning is your asset. Those you complain about company politics have already lost half the game, grow up, its everywhere.

Things get tricky when you join higher up though as people are very choosy and some even prejudiced that has developed with age. You know the saying "Olds Dogs are Hard to Train" and it applies to both who joins new higher up and the ones who are already there.

But on an average small companies do offer more exposure to variety of work and bigger companies offer exposure to large scale work which are also an experience by themselves. If one is average skilled, bigger companies offer more cushion and protection.

[landcruiser123]

There is no one size fit all job. That is what I've understood in about a year of corporate work experience. It all depends on what you want - you can learn anywhere.

One thing I've been told (or rather warned) is that some large companies have too many people. There's a particular Computer Network Hardware manufacturing company in San Jose which has routing layoffs even before the pandemic hit.

The question I ask myself is - Why work for someone? Why have the golden handcuff? As an immigrant in the USA on a student visa, I realize that the true 'American Dream' is diluted for most Indian immigrants.

[Simha13]

The knowledge one gains working in a small organisation is phenomenal, Especially in my case. As a mechanical engineer, the practical experience of what we studied can be learnt only in a small/mid size companies. I donned multiple hats as a Graduate Engineer Trainee working in new product development to supply chain management to production before jumping to a MNC, where I knew more about manufacturing processes than even the guy with 3+ years of experience.

Working in small organisation has worked wonders for me and even today is helping me while I am running my own small factory.

[NiInJa]

Based on my experience of 11 years in IT industry, I can say that the possibility of getting 'boring' work at the start of career is high in big organisations compared to small organisations, but you can never predict. Times are changing so I don't think now-a-days even the companies are going to hire freshers just to monitor server activity for large clients.

Its good if you know what exactly you are getting into once you receiver the offer letter. But most of the times that is not the case. For people like us who were picked up by truck-loads from college campus, it was down to luck where you would get your first project. I joined a medium sized IT company (but I'll categorize it as a large organisation) and was lucky enough to get into a practice which was just one year old, the technology that we were working on was so new that there were just a handful of experts in India. That worked out well for me as I got a lot of experience (also at the cost of working 12 hours a day, but absolutely no regrets ) . There were some others who got into really large support centers where all they had to do was send notification emails or perform simple health-checks of Production servers. Definitely not a good place to start career.

To summarise: When starting a career, The size of your company really doesn't matter. What matters is the people around you, how 'important' you are for them and vice-versa, What kind of work they expect you to do and does that work align with your interests and your future, the organization's and the technology's future too.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by NiInJa

Based on my experience of 11 years in IT industry, I can say that the possibility of getting 'boring' work at the start of career is high in big organisations compared to small organisations, but you can never predict. Times are changing so I don't think now-a-days even the companies are going to hire freshers just to monitor server activity for large clients.

There is one aspect that I have realized. Like you said, jobs are boring. But please do also note, any job which you may like at the start, once it starts yielding revenue over a period of time, will asymptotically become mundane.

So a "work" once it start providing a stable solution will only need to be maintained well. Incremental ingenuity needs to be put only improve upon. But one may not be able to expect to be in that mode all the time.

The way I look at it, a big portion of our time will go into that mode, which pays our bills. But a fraction of it we should look out, to spend for that extra spark which lights our day beyond the mundane. But again thats in general as you grow in the industry.

When it comes to start of career, it does not matter whether its a big or a small organization. If one is quick to see through the challenge one faces daily he can guide his course. Yes for a newbie its not easy. And thats where I guess, the criticality of a mentor/boss makes a HUGE difference.

[V.Narayan]

Slightly off topic but still relevant. The career we pursue is ultimately only a small, albeit important, part of our lives. In the last 50 to 60 years it has acquired a disproportionate weightage in our lives especially when we are young and a little bit of reality settles in after 50 for some, after 55 for others and after 60 for most.

Instead of looking at this from the early years of our careers let's turn the prism around and view matters from the end of our lives. Let's say we live to a reasonable age of 85. What is it that will value the most from 65 to 85 which by the way is a looooonng 20 years. In my opinion and based on my experience {it may differ for others} the things you will value will be:-

(1) Health for yourself and health for your spouse {assuming he/she is alive}. Without your own health nothing but nothing else matters. Without health you often drift to a bitter end which for some unfortunates could be rather drawn out.

(2) That your children grew up well, settled down well, are not enmeshed in bitter family feuds and divorces and you have a balanced and happy relationship with them. The seeds for that need to be sown from the time the kids are babies. It does not happen one day when he/she grows up. That your kids blossomed into fields and careers of their choosing and were not force fitted into meeting your unspoken aspirations.

(4) Enough financial security to live on comfortable with reserves and insurances for emergencies. What is enough to live on comfortably will vary from person to person, of course.

(5) And finally the general satisfaction that you did fine in your life career wise. Forget 85 even at 60 you will scarcely dwell on awards you won, deals you closed and double promotions you clocked. It is all too far back and of little relevance to your life and priorities. The only non-financial asset from my business career that has value today is that it put me at a certain social & business status which I have since maintained and leveraged for my healthcare work.

There are other factors at position #6 such as relationship with spouse and so on but as our focus is career I stopped at #5. I will admit I can't say career is not important just like we can't say money is not important. But as we pursue our career journey sometimes it helps to keep a longer term perspective. There is certainly joy and confidence and financial gain by doing well provided it is not at the cost of the other priorities. As for small versus large organizations - the variables are far too many and it can be six of one and half a dozen of the other. For me having worked very closely with some industry stalwarts in my early years in very large corporations gave me some sense of how big corporations and group holding companies work, how stalwarts think and the kind of best practices big successful companies follow which I later tried to implement in my own business.

[INJAXN]

I have 12 years of experience working in software technology firms, and have only worked in large size companies, I am trying to list few pros and cons of starting your career with a big firm.

pros:

1) You become part of a big family where most of the things are organized and structured. Being part of a big firm gives you some comfort and social confidence. Most people take pride in working for big firms, at least initially.

2) In most big companies, new college grads are trained for 2-4 months and then are put to projects. This gives you time to see, understand and adapt to the corporate culture.
You are also trained on multiple proficiencies, in some cases you are also given a chance to choose between them. Big firms are good place to learn best and standard practices.

3) Employee benefits: Big firms gives you better benefits like group insurance, transportation facility, learning portals ( but these days there are multiple sources available freely). These things are important for a fresher.

4) Defined roles and responsibilities.

5) Big firms have their offices in multiple cities. You can move to city of your choice without having to change jobs.


Cons:

1) Big firms have lots of rules and regulations in place ( this can be both good and bad).
e.g. You cannot just download a free software and use it.

2) Once you are in a project and if you don't like the work, it will be difficult for you to change it. Most firms have 12 to 18 months rule before you are allowed to change the project.

3) In a big firm, very few projects supports or needs "Out of the box thinking". You are just expected to keep the things running. Especially as a fresher you are less likely to influence any decision.

4) Irrespective of your performance you may find your self a victim of bell curve, there are too many people and less number of seats at higher level. however this point is valid for senior employees also, not just freshers.

[kshastry]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Slightly off topic but still relevant. The career we pursue is ultimately only a small, albeit important, part of our lives. In the last 50 to 60 years it has acquired a disproportionate weightage in our lives especially when we are young and a little bit of reality settles in after 50 for some, after 55 for others and after 60 for most.......
.

Dear Sir, I have been a long time lurker. I always have tried to follow your posts (and some of other distinguished BHPians like Samurai, Smartcat et al). The insights, wisdom, thoughts and opinions you have given are invaluable and priceless. I always come back to such threads, refer them again and again to keep myself realistic and level headed. Thank you and keep them coming.

[nitinkbhaskar]

Very interesting topic. Thanks OP for sharing this.

Apart from the pros and cons of big vs small organizations which have been listed by other members, I would just like to mention 1 thing, which I have always followed - "Never choose your company, always choose your boss".

In my opinion, all the pros of big / small organizations will fall flat if your line manager does not provide that ecosystem to learn and grow. Hence, if feasible try to interact at length with your hiring manager during interview phase to get a sense check if your ways of working align with his or not. This will go a long way in making your stay in that organization worthwhile.