It may be a prestige to be in a big firm in many places, but in the valley it is a prestige to be in a successful company. And luckily for techies in the valley

It may be a prestige to be in a big firm in many places, but in the valley it is a prestige to be in a successful company. And luckily for techies in the valley, there are quite many great blow-out companies of much smaller size. In fact, I would cringe if a company's goal is to grow from 300 engineers to thousands in a year, as Uber's CTO used to boast. I would not join a big tech either because well, where is the 10X return? Don't get me wrong, though. All I'm saying is that techies in the valley have a lot of amazing choices. Some people are definitely great at navigating big tech's dynamics, and they should join big techs and enjoy phenomenal success. It's just for even more people, joining a small company has a better chance of becoming successful, at least in terms of money and job satisfaction.