Working for small vs large businesses

Hey everyone
From personal experience, I would like to gather information on working for a small business (51-100 employees) vs a larger business (10,000+ employees).

For these questions, take into perspective IT specific roles.

If you've worked for both a small business and a large business, what are some pros and cons for each that you have experienced?

How do you feel that job security is between the two?

Is it risky business working for a company that opened in 2013 vs a company that has been around for 50 years?

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DatabaseHead

While I was working for the smaller company I felt after ~1.5 years things started to turn sideways. From my personal experience working for start up or smaller company is MUCH better, but your life expectancy is a lot lower. Like I mentioned things can go south in a hurry.

On the flip side working for a massive corp feels blah and sometimes more stressful than it needs to be but the job security is strong, really strong. If you literally did bare minimum you could survive for a few years easy.

jdancer

Cliff notes version:

Large biz = siloed in terms of responsibilities
Small biz = not so much siloed in terms of responsibilities

Jon_Cisco

I currently work for a small business with three locations. My biggest complaint is there is absolutely no IT budget. Everything is break/fix with no redundancy.

techfiend

Early on I think small businesses can really kickstart your career. However later on it might be nice to have the job security ans pay enterprises can provide, looking for a job sucks. I'm finding it relatively tough to go from SMB to enterprise right now. They seem to discriminate on the size of environment. Even though I've done much more challenging things on smaller environments like data center migrations integrated load balancing to name a few, enterprises aren't interested in me even for a patching admin position. I've heard it's even tougher to go from enterprise to SMB as you lack well rounded experience.

DatabaseHead

jdancer wrote: »

Cliff notes version:

Large biz = siloed in terms of responsibilities
Small biz = not so much siloed in terms of responsibilities

About sums it up. Siloed here.

paul78

Jasiono wrote: »

Hey everyone From personal experience, I would like to gather information on working for a small business (51-100 employees) vs a larger business (10,000+ employees). For these questions, take into perspective IT specific roles. If you've worked for both a small business and a large business, what are some pros and cons for each that you have experienced?

I've worked with and for companies of varying sizes ranging from 2 to 40K employees. I tend to focus more on the revenue and profitability of the company and it's business when I compare pros/cons. The number of employees in a company rarely will translate into whether the job experience will be positive or negative.

If you are seeking stability, you may want to look at factors like whether the company is profitable, sector of the business, the average employee turnover, the business philosophy of the executive leadership, etc...

Jasiono wrote: »

How do you feel that job security is between the two? Is it risky business working for a company that opened in 2013 vs a company that has been around for 50 years?

It will depend on the company. I've worked for large public companies that have a philosophy of culling low-performing employees and we will implement a layoff every fiscal year regardless of the financial condition of the company. I've also worked for small venture-backed startups that will terminate employees very quickly if performance does not meet expectations.

Conversely, I've worked for large companies that generally do not lay off employees or fire them and instead will reassign lower performing employees into other roles. Similarly, I've worked for small companies where the execs and owners will take a temporary pay-cut to avoid a layoff or work stoppage if there is a bad quarter.

Smaller companies that are venture-backed startups are typically going to be riskier. Larger public companies with poor financial performance or undergoing transformation will be riskier.

A young private business that has no outside investors, low debt, and good recurring revenue in a sector that is still robust is probably going to less risky than an old large public business that is having to keep share-holders happy.

My only advice if you are looking to make a change to a company that is more stable - you ought to factor in other considerations besides number of employees.

BTW - if you are looking for job security - you could consider other types of organizations like a college or university - maybe public sector.

ps.89

From my experience..

Small company

My first IT job had maybe 15 people when I started. It was for a small MSP. I think these types of companies are great for those who are trying to get into IT. You get your hands into a lot. I primarily did help desk, but I also helped out with building servers, managing VMWare, some light networking, etc. We had one network guy, one systems guy, and one developer. We all worked closely together with the owner.

P: More responsibilities and opportunity to advance
P: Interaction with upper management and possibly the owner
P: Work culture. Part of one team, which is the company.
C: Generally less pay
C: No benefits
C: On-call because of being short staffed

Big company

The next company I worked for had over 5,000 employees. The IT department alone was close to 100 people. The pay was was nearly double my first IT job at the small MSP. But since it was so departmentalized (Network dpt, Server dpt, Messaging dpt, Security, etc, Service Desk, etc.), my job duties were strictly service desk. It was a step back for me in job duties. Also, there was a big lack of communications between the departments - when there was an update, we usually found out from the users. Another con is the level of micromanagement big companies implement... monitoring our phone calls, auditing our tickets, etc.

P: Opportunity to specialize
P: Generally more pay
P: Benefits
P: Structure
C: Departmentalized
C: Micromanagement

Clm

So I use to work in a small mssp with 120 people. It was cool you knew most everyone we partied a lot lol and there was a lot of room to learn things that might not be your direct responsibility. I also got a lot of things done cause I would just walk to their desk and pull up a chair and hash it out.

Now I work in an enterprise of about 110K+ people and it has a lot of politics your sillowed into doing one small thing most of the time and I probably know 25 people here at my organization. not as much growth as you would think. Work is not as efficient a lot of bickering over responsibility and a lot of sales guys whispering into ears of high ranking people who know nothing.