> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things Obviously that is not universal

> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things Obviously that is not universally true: All the things that do see the light of day, some small, some big, are done by actual employees of a big corporation. Maybe you will not be working on them all the time, but chances are good that you will at least get the opportunity to have a public, meaningful impact. Just as an anecdote, when I interned at Google long ago, I got to work on a public feature in Google Maps. It was a great feeling to directly work on something that anyone could potentially use, and see even just a few public reactions. That experience probably set my path on favoring working at big corporations, because I knew I could do meaningful things there if I position myself correctly, whereas startups seemed much more like a big gamble (which by itself is probably an exaggeration also). Just yesterday I spoke to someone at another big corporation who proudly proclaimed that people clapped at the mentioning of their own feature, when it was unveiled as part of a bigger announcement. YMMV.