Startups are faster paced and provide faster general skills growth. For example I was running a team of five devs a year after graduating - that would not have

Startups are faster paced and provide faster general skills growth. For example I was running a team of five devs a year after graduating - that would not have happened at a big company. I also got the chance to architect complex systems within my first 2 years - again that would not have happened at a big company. On the other hand by moving to a large tech company my pay quadrupled and I was able to focus on growing my pure coding ability. I’ve also had the opportunity to solve complex dev problems that we would have just ignored/hacked around in a startup. Probably my most frustrating experience is that big tech companies are biased towards big tech company experience. My extensive management experience was heavily discounted and I had to join as an IC. It took me almost 5 years to get to the same management level (director) at my current big tech (non-FAANG) company.