Small and BIG companies

Having worked for several years in small web agencies, 5 months ago, I decided to try something new and got employed in a fairly large (3,500 employees) IT company. What I saw in the new workplace turned out to be very far from my expectations. Due to numerous requests from my friends and in response to a recent article under the cut, several observations on the differences between large and small IT companies. The taste and color, as you know, markers are different. So this article is by no means the ultimate truth, this is what I ran into and what was important to me.

Managers Speakers

Bureaucracy. More people - more managers, more discussions. A question that you can solve in 5 minutes in a small company, having discussed it with the project manager or with a client directly, can be solved for hours and days in large organizations. Sometimes it seems that these guys enjoy the pleasure of transfusing from a sieve. Obvious solutions are served with a sauce of profound conclusions and approvals with several higher ranks.

Drones and Optimization Managers

Many managers of large companies are not interested in optimizing the work process. Optimization is a direct threat to their jobs. Therefore, it is quite difficult to push through the use of many products / approaches. A person who receives a salary for performing the functions of a bugtracker is a completely normal phenomenon.
In a small company, a well-established production process is one of the conditions for survival on the market.
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Drones developers

I was lucky, I worked in good companies and idlers almost never met. It turned out that many of them are hiding in large corporations, quietly shit on ten-year projects. Govnokodery with experience say that after living to 40 years, I understand them. Hope this is not true.

Dig from here to lunch

In large companies, people are resources, units with exemplary skill sets. Chips that need to be placed in terms of financing. Yes, of course, small companies also have their own plans, people also have resources in one way or another. But in small companies there are more opportunities to influence the wrong choice by expressing their opinion. In large companies you can get the answer: “You are right, I agree with you, but I have a plan, they demand from me - I can’t do anything.” It’s not always possible to reach out to those who can influence the process.

We are all in the same boat

In large companies from one person is not so much dependent. The working environment is much calmer than in small agencies, where almost every project can seriously affect financial stability. The employees of small companies are under much greater pressure of responsibility. And often they hear the words “you have to be patient, you need to help the company during this period.” It happens that employers forget that hired employees work primarily for money, and only then for interest and for the future of the company.

Corporate programs

In large companies, you will get much more than the various components of the social package. Health insurance, various discounts, free fruits and buns. Also sports, recreational and cultural events. Yes, in small companies it is also all there, but the order is completely different.

Stability

An aircraft carrier, as is known, is much more difficult to sink than an inflatable boat. People from big companies are better dressed for sure about tomorrow. More boldly take large loans, with a grin look at the approaching second wave of crisis.

Projects

As a rule, large companies and customers are big. They are rarely exchanged for projects in several months. Preferences are given to multi-year developments. People come, leave, and the inherited code remains. Often not the best quality. Lack of documentation is also a fairly common problem. A lot of time is spent on studying existing solutions, and not on development. Yes, and the use of the latest tools / technologies of speech, of course, is not.
In small companies, you can choose the tools for a specific project, try something new every few months. Support for projects, even age ones, delivers less pain, since projects are usually written by small teams, and not by programmers who worked on the project in different years.

Career growth

The cog in the big gear needs to be very hard to show itself. In small teams this is much easier. Career in large companies built over the years. Devotion and experience here are often more valuable than work efficiency.

“In large companies, either amoebas or piercing people with an endless source of internal energy and steel eggs must work. The middle peasants are likely to become amoebas over time, and the strong will not all survive. ” ( C ) Mephistophele

Professional growth

Because of the specifics of projects and the organization of work, it is more difficult to grow professionally in large companies than in small ones. On large projects, people can perform monotonous tasks for years, become subject matter experts, almost without developing their developers skills.

Once again about optimization

In a large company, you can sit around for a few weeks waiting for the project. Get paid for reading blogs and writing articles on habr. Someone dies at this time from boredom, someone enjoys idleness. Small companies cannot afford such luxury.

For myself, I saw more advantages of working in small agencies, which I soon return to. A large company is quite a comfortable place, but not everyone can enjoy this comfort.

UPD
Not all the statements in this article are true for all small and large companies. But, unfortunately, much of the above is quite common. As there are other positive and negative circumstances - as you can see by reading the comments on this article. There are also small companies with bureaucrats, there are big ones with interesting projects and excellent work organization. And different people look at the same things differently.
It is necessary to be critical of the choice of the company, to learn as much as possible about the organization of work, future colleagues, possible advantages / disadvantages of working in a certain place before employment. Be careful when choosing a place of work!