The biggest reason I joined a startup after graduating: I got to do things. Positions that I would be steered towards applying for in big companies would be th

The biggest reason I joined a startup after graduating: I got to do things. Positions that I would be steered towards applying for in big companies would be things like "sales engineer", "support engineer", testing, verification, documentation, government policy... lots of grinding-work type of jobs. Put in your 5-8 years and/or get a Master's degree, and then we can talk about interesting work (I'm in hardware, fwiw). At the startup, I do a bit of all that, but I also get to make things. A few months in, and I was designing boards, all the way from initial design, through schematic, layout, prototyping and testing. I write code we need when we need it. I get to help figure out what kind of specs we need to look for, and how to do it. I get to work at macro- (architecture) and micro- (components and signal levels) levels in near-parallel, on my design in progress. I have the impression that I would be lucky to have found a job with a large company that let me run as far as I have in any one of those directions.