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The main difference between working for a big company vs. a small company is that the roles tend to be explicitly defined and specialized at a big company. You

by kyllo 13y ago

The main difference between working for a big company vs. a small company is that the roles tend to be explicitly defined and specialized at a big company. You don't need/get to wear as many hats as you will at a small company or a startup. Basically, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades / "full stack" developer, you might become an expert on one layer of a huge technology stack. This can be good, or bad, or mixed. There is more formal training and you can get deeper knowledge, but it's harder to get broad knowledge. It can be hard to change roles or try new things. Generally, I think learning "full stack" is preferable when you're young, and specializing might be better as you get a little older.

jfasi 13y ago
A good point in a sea of trolling. Thanks.
sukuriant 13y ago
Unless you're a tester, then you get to wear lots of hats, too.
DougWebb 13y ago
I worked for a fairly big company (100+ employees pre-acquisition) and I was able to develop a very broad role. I started as just a web UI developer, but soon helped design the deployment architecture of our entire runtime system and throughout my tenure I designed and implemented many of the services within that architecture. That included everything from DB schemas, custom XML databases, authentication servers, several mid-tier servers/services, as well as always being the lead owner of the UI. What helped, I think, is that I was part of a small team in that big company. At peak we probably had about two dozen programmers, with 8-10 on my team. That's not much bigger than the team I'm on now in a tiny company where I also get to work end-to-end. I disagree with specializing as you get older: there's going to be a tendency to do that, but it's the last thing you want to do. Never stop learning, never stop broadening your skillset. Sooner or later you're going to be a 40+ year old developer looking for work, and if you're a specialist you're going to be looking for a long time. As an experienced developer with a proven track record of adaptability you'll be able to justify the salary that you're going to want/need.
- ramchip 13y ago
  IMHO 100 people isn't a big company at all... two dozen programmers can still comfortably fit in a room and know eachother. My current company has 200k employees, we spend a large amount of time just looking for whoever is responsible for something...
  - DougWebb 13y ago
    When we got acquired we became much, much bigger. Depending on how you counted divisions you could come up with anywhere between 50 to hundreds of developers. A few of our projects involved developers coordinating across those divisions, but when I left they were still fairly independent most of the time.

by kyllo 13y ago

jfasi 13y ago

A good point in a sea of trolling. Thanks.

sukuriant 13y ago

Unless you're a tester, then you get to wear lots of hats, too.

DougWebb 13y ago

I worked for a fairly big company (100+ employees pre-acquisition) and I was able to develop a very broad role. I started as just a web UI developer, but soon helped design the deployment architecture of our entire runtime system and throughout my tenure I designed and implemented many of the services within that architecture. That included everything from DB schemas, custom XML databases, authentication servers, several mid-tier servers/services, as well as always being the lead owner of the UI. What helped, I think, is that I was part of a small team in that big company. At peak we probably had about two dozen programmers, with 8-10 on my team. That's not much bigger than the team I'm on now in a tiny company where I also get to work end-to-end. I disagree with specializing as you get older: there's going to be a tendency to do that, but it's the last thing you want to do. Never stop learning, never stop broadening your skillset. Sooner or later you're going to be a 40+ year old developer looking for work, and if you're a specialist you're going to be looking for a long time. As an experienced developer with a proven track record of adaptability you'll be able to justify the salary that you're going to want/need.

ramchip 13y ago
IMHO 100 people isn't a big company at all... two dozen programmers can still comfortably fit in a room and know eachother. My current company has 200k employees, we spend a large amount of time just looking for whoever is responsible for something...
- DougWebb 13y ago
  When we got acquired we became much, much bigger. Depending on how you counted divisions you could come up with anywhere between 50 to hundreds of developers. A few of our projects involved developers coordinating across those divisions, but when I left they were still fairly independent most of the time.