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Comment by Cranzatz | Hacker News Reader

I've worked mostly at smaller companies my whole career. Two years ago I joined a company with 4k employees, which merged with a 50k+ employee company. It's a very uncomfortable situation for me.

I absolutely hate how political and bureaucratic my current company is. It's so difficult to get anything done, because of the micromanagement and second-guessing for the sake of "collaboration." It's dreadfully slow. Nearly all management has family and kids; most of my direct coworkers don't. Two are engaged, one is married with two kids. I'm gay and am not planning to ever have kids. So I have a ton of free time in comparison to my straight coworkers.

My plan is to start my own company in a few years. I don't think I can tolerate an atmosphere where I can't set my own pace. I'm a pretty competitive person who likes quick results. I get the feeling I'm out of place in my current environment.

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I totally understand what you are saying. Small companies may be better for you. For me, I'm only at work to get a paycheck. I'm also a very competitive person, but that's why I want to have a strong work/life balance -- so I can have time to work on the things I want to work on, like my game (http://wizardsofzenith.com) and improving my PRs at road races. But I definitely understand if your heart is really in the work you do at your job that a big company environment would be very frustrating.

There is different kinds of big companies. Salesforce will be different than google which will be different than cisco. Some of them will be far more positive than others.

They will differ, but will they be more different, or more alike?

Things can move slower at big companies, but sometimes that can be a nice opportunity to come in and help change the culture. If you can't tolerate it or it can't be changed, probably time to move on. I bet in most big companies there are high performance teams that move more efficiently than the average - it's just sometimes not easy to find them or get on them.

If you want to work with a team that spends all of their free time at work, you may find it challenging in most places, but especially big companies. Having work/life balance is pretty important to most people, especially when you're just collecting a paycheck and not invested/owner in a business.

Are you one of those people that thinks everyone around him is an idiot? That if everyone could just leave you alone, you could get a shitload of work done in no time?

How about late stage startups that have plans to go public(my situation) ? In this environment, we are still small enough to where you can make a name for yourself and stable enough where pay and benefits are good. There is a mix of people: family, married no kids, single. When we hit the exit, people who come in the last couple of years will get something, but nothing like the early employee's.

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