I've worked at the G and hated it. It was too big and agree 100% with your analysis. Money and benefits are great, especially considering how little work is act

I've worked at the G and hated it. It was too big and agree 100% with your analysis. Money and benefits are great, especially considering how little work is actually expected of you (compared to smaller orgs). I enjoyed always being able to find someone who knew more than me, which opened up really good learning opportunities. But as you said, good luck getting any of your accomplishments noticed. Your direct manager would notice and you hope they write the right kinds of letters and accolades to other people to notify them, but that's about all you can ask for. I've also been at small startups. I worked somewhere early in my career where I was employee #5 and stayed there until we were about 70 employees. It was exciting and I can say humbly that I touched essentially every feature and decision that happened during those ~3 years, which can be rewarding. I'm not saying I personally built the whole company, i had other good engineers around me, but you were involved in everything, so you touched everything and played at least a partial role in everything that was built. That's a great learning experience in its own right. But I found it very stressful to have so much expected of you. At these small companies you will always have more on your plate than even the most efficient engineer can accomplish. The backlog is endless, and solving even basic problems often required new systems or decisions because everything is new and no precedent exists for anything. I've found my happy place at what i call a "mid-size" company. By my defintiion that is ~250 employees (+/- 100). I admit that the industry definition of mid-size is generally 500-1000 though. I really like this 200-300 range size. It is big enough that at least basic systems exist for everything already. There are teams for each product meaning that you aren't building everything and can focus on a certain area. But you also aren't pigeonholed in a narrow job description either. While you might have a sector of the app you manage, it can still be moderately broad giving you good variety. The team isn't so small that you are doing everything, but its also still small enough that if you accomplish impressive achievements that it still gets noticed. It is small enough that you know most people in the company by name but the team is still large enough you can always find someone with expertise in a weird thing you might want help with. By the time the company is this size, they aren't going to dissapear overnight like a 20 person startup might (although in tech anything is still possible). I'm happy where I am now, so no plans on leaving. But when I search again, I am going to be targeting companies of 100-400 employees again. I really think its the perfect size.