When I was looking for jobs my senior year in college, I noticed a pattern at the job fair. Large companies head hunt GPAs and small companies are much more int

When I was looking for jobs my senior year in college, I noticed a pattern at the job fair. Large companies head hunt GPAs and small companies are much more interested in personality and hands-on experience. I thought about why this would be the case and came to the conclusion that if a large company makes a bad hiring decision, then the slack created by one bad employee is distributed across several dozen other employees. If a small company makes a bad hiring decision, it could cause culture problems as well as bring the company/project to its knees. I just got assigned to a project at my company that's underfunded. So, they put together a group of junior level engineers and put them in charge - with mentoring senior level engineers in the background. It's trying to simulate the start-up environment, but it doesn't quite get there. You have a limited amount of time/money, and junior engineers eager to show what they can do with the responsibility they've been given.