counter point: after working for small owner-run companies where the owner took everything personally, I will forever only work in big tech.

The owner ran the show and was emotional. Every time a competitor launched something new, they would change course and race to copy them. Ended up delivering nothing and eventually laid off after 1.5 years.

At a big company, everyone is spending someone else's money and the people at the top realize they can't (and shouldn't!) change course every 3 mo.

The hard part about choosing the small business route is you have to do a really good job (and somewhat get lucky) at screening the owner and company. I had only ever worked at mega corps my entire carrier until my latest job at a <100 employee founders run company. The company is post "come join our startup and try to make crazy money/change the world" but pre "as you can see on document 3 section 7 process 4 paragraph 2 item 2a sub iii it says we next need to get approval..." and has a solid income stream already while also focusing on sustainable growth rather than max growth. I knew one of the founders from back in the day and was able to meet with the other and some of the senior management and a few of the engineers multiple times before joining. I wouldn't have jumped at the time had I not had a similar level of confidence that I knew what the people and day-to-day were like.

Now I could have missed some red flags or just had bad luck and regretted it/had a bad experience but just passing a year in I'm happier than ever with work and really excited about the future for at least the next 2-3 years (after that will depend on what the company looks like at that point).

At the same time one could have missed red flags or just had bad luck with $MegaCorpN too. The company I left ended up outsourcing it's entire IT staff of thousands and rehiring a few core architects who now are all disappointed with the workload and most are looking elsewhere if they haven't already jumped ship. I've actaully worked toa get a few of those folks to come over to my current place.

This. I work for a narcissist piece of sh. Everyone is leaving because he's incompetent. I've been doing startups for most of the 20+ years of my career and I thought Marc Pincus was the worst I'd ever suffer through. This is worse. He smelled off (metaphorically) when I spoke with him but the goal made sense. He has f'ed it up completely by micro managing every aspect of the company, despite his lack of knowledge in almost all areas. Now I'm moving to part time for this place (for the sake of the eng team, I'm not doing a hard cut) and I'm consulting until I find an org that isn't run like a dumpster fire on meth.

Agreed. With small biz, it’s high reward / risk, because so much more depends on a small group of people

In large companies things get standardized, so there’s a more likely chance of an average experience.

>the owner took everything personally

I mean, it's important to pick the right owner. It's PARAMOUNT you be personally compatible.

I've been at the same place for 14+ years for a reason.

There's a middle-ground. Aim for 50-200, and private. Small enough to be treated like a person, big enough to have an HR department.

There's probably a lot to be said for that approach. Isn't there some known-number for "above this population, organizations suffer?"

> At a big company, everyone is spending someone else's money and the people at the top realize they can't (and shouldn't!) change course every 3 mo.

tell that to the google messaging teams :-D

Third point: I've worked with nice owner for about 3 years and last year he merged companies with someone who can barely write and berates his developers on zoom calls.

> Avoid public firms. A corporation cannot show loyalty, but a HUMAN can.

Counterpoint: I work in a FAANG and the first thing I noticed what that I was just a small piece in a big machine. Everyone is replaceable. People change teams all the time, some leave the company after 6 months, only to re-join 1 year later... But it's actually a good thing! I don't have the same amount of stress I had when working in a small company.

yeah, big companies have a very favorable what-happens-if-i-get-hit-by-a-bus score

This is good advice, with the caveat that the owner needs to not be a dick.

I've worked in environments like this both with amazing owners and with truly horrifying owners.

Yeah, watch out for small companies that are desperately trying to get big but have been small or oscillated between 10-40 people seemingly from the beginning of time.

There's a particular type of person who runs these businesses and that person is extremely common. They cannot delegate and micromanage everything so once they get beyond their ability to manage every facet of operations themselves, their leadership ability breaks down and a bunch of people end up leaving and the cycle repeats. They very often have temper/anger management issues as well.

Your description is so on the point I think many here will be able to resonate. I worked under one such owner myself! The flipside was that we were so often blocked by him that I got a lot of free time to experiment and learn.

This! I have been to such a company, sticked to ~10 employees for years due to managers and founding engineers firing people all the time and engineers leaving and coming within 1 year due to toxic micro management.

From that point i always ask questions about the employee count across the years, the projection and average retention.

In my current role, I've been lucky because we're in a market that IS very financially viable, but isn't HUGE. There's no push to grow crazy big or fast; the push is to keep the product ahead. And we're doing that, with a small team.

We will need to grow a bit in the next couple years, but mostly in (I'm guessing) testing and support.

Before this I was in some other small orgs with generally good management, but they failed. We had lean years at this firm -- there was a furlough period, with 4-day workweeks and 80% salary, and I thought about leaving but honestly also enjoyed the extra day off, too.

We made it over that hump, and are now doing well. My main concerns at this point are leadership succession at the top, and also at the top of the actual dev group. The latter is more easily addressed than the former.

I worked there! Canadian company. Seemed very determined to stay a small company while having huge aspirations.

I feel there is a story here...

“Small business tyrant” is a term of art for a reason.

I switched to big Corps after a micromanaging owner and his yes-man CTO.

My experience was the opposite, the only time I've ever had someone pay me late, and on top of that asked me to work for free was when I was dealing with a very small business owner. You either need to have some VC funding, or be a well-established company for me to even want to apply.

I guess there might be some unicorn bootstrapped exceptions to the rule, but in general I find the bigger the company the smoother things are when it comes to actually getting paid.

I could have written almost the same 2 paragraphs. Feels like you worked where I worked. Never again.

And when I say late I mean I didn't get my first paycheck until 60 days after I started!

I've had good luck with this too. More diverse work, more free rein to experiment with stuff, less oppressive IT department...you can generally get away with telling 'Joe' to eat your ass if he wants to try to pull you into windows/AD only with no admin or WSL...

Being a developer without local admin is rough. My IT department recently rolled out such a policy and it has really made development a challenge for several teams. Fortunately, they allow us to use WSL2 and don’t interfere with what’s running in there. My team uses VS Code dev containers running in WSL2, and for the most part haven’t had major issues.

Don't go too small though. At least where I live, FIRE/ESBI has caught on hard. A lot of bosses are not interested in running a company, they're interested in owning one and keeping the income as passive as possible.

They're the face of the company. They use the company to get talks and government sponsored trips to Silicon Valley, but the company means nothing to them. It's like a car, a liability. It loses money every year, which the CEO doesn't care about, until they have to shut it down.

There are also huge companies that are still owner run. The place I work has hundreds of people, but the CEO tried to talk to everyone he can. We have town halls every month, and the CEO tries to take some time to talk with us face to face, and just to make sure he gets everyone, he also does a mailing list on updates, where the responses go direct to his inbox. It's not a 1:1 relationship, but it tries to be a human to human relationship.

How do you find those? I've worked in places like this and loved it. Probably didn't earn as much as elsewhere, but it feels pretty good to show up to work motivated to work on something interesting.

Startups obviously. Less obviously look for "SBIR" shops if you're ok with a little bit of weird gov contracting overhead.

Startups don't stay small though. They're aiming to get really big or have some kind of big exit in a hurry. Some of them are a lot of fun, some stay good even as they grow, others turn into depressing places to work.

Honestly the biggest issue with this strategy is US capitalism isn't kind to companies that just stay small. You're not going to find a lot of places that want to remain tiny, just a lot that, as mentioned above, remain so through micromanagement.

Maybe you get lucky and find a labor-of-love kinda place where someone is just trying to be really good at making one type of thing (highly niche products) but a better bet is to just find a comfy place, stay there a few years and help them get bigger, then leave and repeat.

I suspect that a lot of these companies just don't make a lot of noise, but quietly do their thing without being pasted all over the HN front page.

SBIR shops often pay abysmally (with bad benefits) even if the work is interesting.

Depends on the shop. SBIR farms that have never commercialized a single product are terrible. Ones that have a revenue stream are fine.

That also involves a lot of proposal writing, which can be hard and involve some late nights! But the work can be very interesting and varied.

I don't agree with this.

The smaller the company and the closer you are to the owners, the more your relationship with them is that of a tool. A disposable and replacable tool.

When you work for a larger company (assuming you are providing more value to the company than your employment is costing them), your job is secure. Your day to day is relatively comfortable. You are also likely to be surrounded by more peers which contributes greatly to job satisfaction. You belong.

Look at it this way. If you notice your postman one day looking at his phone for a bit instead of delivering mail, you probably arn't going to get too bent out of shape over it. While you are paying taxes to employ his services, you're not too invested in his productivity.

On the other hand, if you've hired a plumber and you're paying him $150/hour, discovering him taking a personal phone call is worrying. You're directly paying for every minute he's on the phone. You aren't happy and the next time you need a plumber, you'll be considering your options.

Now consider taking an emergency phone call as the employee:

If you are a plumber working directly for an owner/customer, taking an emergency phone call is stressful. The customer/owner is JUDGING you because it's his money paying you. That phone call is more likely to negatively affect your livelihood.

If you are a plumber working large company, your foreman is probably more interested in not losing you and having to spend time replacing you. Your wages aren't coming direcly out of HIS pocket, so he's more invested in believing your phone call is reasonable. He WANTS to believe that.

I've worked for a dozen small companies (20-100 employees) and a couple large companies (200-10000 employees). My job satisifaction has been much, much higher at the two large companies.

There must be a HUGE pay discrepancy. I mean millions of dollars over the course of a decade. Too much opportunity cost, and for what? What is the value of the loyalty shown by the owner?

Most developers have lifetime earnings of that kinda figure. Earning a million dollars total (adjusted for currency differentials) over a decade is an absolutely insanely huge number. that is closer to my expected lifetime earnings than decade earnings. 300-500k$ of value in total in a decade is more realistic for an average value, with a small company to large company difference being maybe 100k over a decade.

All in my location, country, etc.

Developers at a large tech company in the US can easily earn 300K per year. This is US specific, but working at one of these companies isn’t particularly stressful.

For many, it is happiness and focusing on other things in life once they have the means. Millions don't really matter if that's not a motivator in life.

I understand what you’re saying, but focusing on non-work things and working at a big tech company are not mutually exclusive. You can do the same amount of work and make a lot more money.

Right, but some people don't care about making a lot of money.

Sure, but all else equal, wouldn’t you rather earn more? That’s what I’m saying: all else is equal.

Went this direction once only to encounter nepotism and unwillingness to pay decently, but I have seen it work for some!

> Find a relatively small firm, still owner-run and controlled.

Is n’t that a single point of failure?