As always, your mileage may vary. My small companies may be very different from yours (I get the sense there's more variation in small companies than in large c

As always, your mileage may vary. My small companies may be very different from yours (I get the sense there's more variation in small companies than in large companies). Small companies: * Less bureaucracy (for better and worse. The lack of sexual harassment training? Definitely worse). * Typically less politics. This can definitely vary by company though. I've seen cases where someone was basically not fireable because he/she was a family friend of the CEO. * Smaller companies can suffer from a lack of good project management. Beware when this happens, because what you typically get is a very meeting heavy culture that's not effective and/or firefighting. * Freedom to make decisions * Fewer meetings (although you can easily spend half your week or more in meetings if you're not careful). These meetings are more often working group meetings where you're working on a project and less status quo meetings where you're there because it's a standard meeting.