Most people who work in ‘big tech’ have previously worked elsewhere.
Having worked both in small (<100 people and sometimes <10 people) startups and now in Big Tech(TM), it’s not necessarily clear to me that one’s better than the other. They’re different, but working in a startup is not clearly _worse_.
Personally i find startups better to work at. Instead of being a cog in a machine that takes years to “approve” what’s actually needed for the task at hand or having some inexperienced “cio” worker dictating what os or kit you can use you actually get to play with modern tech and do fun things. Even as a manager it’s more fun.
I'm with you. But this is a matter of personality and preference. It's not that startups are objectively better or worse -- it's that startups have different tradeoffs.
I've worked at everything from a 20K person company to a 5 person company and there are pros and cons with probably a lot more variance as you get to the smaller end of the scale. And people have different priorities and even a given person can have different priorities and preferences depending upon where they are in life.
Having worked both in small (<100 people and sometimes <10 people) startups and now in Big Tech(TM), it’s not necessarily clear to me that one’s better than the other. They’re different, but working in a startup is not clearly _worse_.