This is not inherently true - there is no hard and fast rule stating smaller companies are better to work at than larger companies by any metric. I've worked a

This is not inherently true - there is no hard and fast rule stating smaller companies are better to work at than larger companies by any metric. I've worked at a broad spectrum of different sized firms with various titles ranging from analyst to engineer and have found no consistency between size of firm and work/life balance. Ironically I've had a better work/life balance working for larger firms, but ultimately it comes down to your manager and how they manage the department. One example - worked for a large investment bank building software and systems from scratch. Worked 6-7 days a week for up to 14 hours a day at times, but I honestly loved the work and was under no obligation to work that much. My boss and I had a great friendship outside of work and he would call my personal phone to remind me to stop working and do something else. Any requested time-off was always approved by him, he would give me three weeks off for the month of December in addition to the PTO I had already taken during the course of the year. Contrast this to a smaller (albeit one of the largest in their industry) company where we grinded every day 50-60 hours per week, PTO was a hard limit of 3 weeks per year and you were not permitted to take more than a week of PTO at a time and had to check-in every 5 days by e-mail. It was the worst job I've had in engineering. That said, there were brilliant folks working there but most left within a year. I sort of hope the company implodes but they're running away with success atm thanks in large part to the high quality engineers they hire (kudos to their hiring squad).