> At most startups, you will have unlimited opportunities to push your skills as far as you can. With ambitious plans and small teams, you can often set the dir

> At most startups, you will have unlimited opportunities to push your skills as far as you can. With ambitious plans and small teams, you can often set the direction of the design, development, support, or marketing of the product. You will have the opportunity to decide which problems to solve and how to solve them. You can do that at BigCo too - just not crappy ones. GE does this all the time, and so does Google, Facebook, Sony, Samsung and many other decent multinationals - start-ups don't own cool (as much as you want it too). Also - I'm very sceptical of the learning opportunities that are shown by most start-ups. The vast majority of startups make a product that never gets traction, is not technically difficult to implmement and generally adds no value to the world (it may even actively subtract value - Zynga/failed start-ups/lost years of productive life). Conversely - say I work at GE, I might increase the fuel efficiency of diesel engines by 3-4%. Multiply that out, and I've just saved the world an insane amount of fuel, CO2 emissions and costs. Oh and I get paid a lot more by the way, with a ton of benefits, future opportunities and way more impact. Or I could build an app for hipsters.