My first job was at a 40 person shop that designed and manufactured specialized data processors. I look back and thank my lucky stars for that job, because you

My first job was at a 40 person shop that designed and manufactured specialized data processors. I look back and thank my lucky stars for that job, because you can learn far more in a company like that. Think of it this way - a company with 10,000 employees has ten thousand cogs in its machine. Each cog is very, very specialized. Small companies can't afford to specialize. We had three or four full time programmers, and seven or eight EEs. I designed and tested circuits, laid out PC boards, designed enclosures (that turned out to be the hardest task - whaddayamean customers won't appreciate taking out 40 screws to change the power supply? It's solid.), wrote microcode, talked to customers, wrote software for an automated tester I designed and built myself. All in the space of four years. It's not impossible to do that in a big company, but it's very, very unusual. The downside to a company like that is you don't make nearly as much money. But for me the money came later, in spades, because I learned how to do things. If you go to Facebook or Google what will you learn?