I worked at FAANG as well as several small startups (<100 people).
The perhaps biggest downside of working in a big company is politics. You are no longer working to provide value to customers. Instead, you are playing a game of politics to get ahead of your peers. Sometimes these are correlated - you can get ahead by providing value to end-users, but often there is no correlation at all. After a while this really started to get to me to the point I could no longer stand it.
In terms of learning, I found both environments to be similar if you are motivated. It's true that in a startup you are forced to wear many hats and learn about things outside of your comfort zone. However, big companies will often give you these opportunities as well, they just won't force you take them. It's easy to become complacent. In a startup environment you can't do that.
In terms of risk-adjusted payoff, working for a big company is probably a much better choice than working for a startup.
Personally I prefer startups or small companies at this point, I don't think I could deal with the politics in large corporations again.
Comments
I worked at FAANG as well as several small startups (<100 people).
The perhaps biggest downside of working in a big company is politics. You are no longer working to provide value to customers. Instead, you are playing a game of politics to get ahead of your peers. Sometimes these are correlated - you can get ahead by providing value to end-users, but often there is no correlation at all. After a while this really started to get to me to the point I could no longer stand it.
In terms of learning, I found both environments to be similar if you are motivated. It's true that in a startup you are forced to wear many hats and learn about things outside of your comfort zone. However, big companies will often give you these opportunities as well, they just won't force you take them. It's easy to become complacent. In a startup environment you can't do that.
In terms of risk-adjusted payoff, working for a big company is probably a much better choice than working for a startup.
Personally I prefer startups or small companies at this point, I don't think I could deal with the politics in large corporations again.