Upside: Doing things at scale is a huge plus for me. The field I work in is mostly made up of companies deploying things piecemeal with little standardization.

Upside: Doing things at scale is a huge plus for me. The field I work in is mostly made up of companies deploying things piecemeal with little standardization. At the two FAANG-scale companies I've worked for, a ton of the work is figuring out how to deploy employee-facing systems that work equally well for employees around the world and can be supported easily. Downside: First party software. The really big tech companies like to develop their own software rather than fund their perceived competitors. When the company you work for is a market leader this is fine (ex. Microsoft w/ MS Office), but sometimes you wind up being stuck with software that sucks (Ex. Microsoft w/ Internet Explorer up until Edge came out, and arguably after). Also, you're often a permanent beta tester for these tools, which can be frustrating.