If a project is late at Google, you can pull in resources from other projects, delay the release, etc.
If a project is late at a small company, that could mean bankruptcy, even if everyone pulls 80h workweeks.
I personally would prefer a company that is just small enough not to require much corporate bullshit, while still having enough buffer to survive rough patches.
My current project is together with Cap Gemini and holy shit are those guys corporate drones. Absolutely horrible.
When goals aren’t met, or projects don’t show validity in the market, those teams get wound down and the employees are laid off. Moonshot projects still exist, but it’s not uncommon to see execs be parachuted into new orgs with the plebs being fired.
Not really, especially not in countries with sane workers rights. Google won’t just fire a bunch of people because a project is a bit late. They’ll finish the project, eat up the costs and maybe decide later on what to do.
Of course, given the absurdity of the US labor laws, big corporations will also fire people, but ceteris paribus, a larger corporation will be more likely to be able and willing to keep you employed than a smaller shop.
That’s definitely not what’s happening right now at Amazon (where I work), and based on what I’ve heard from coworkers from Google and Meta, it’s basically the same story over there.
Hell, we’ve just had another layoff in our Games division, and many software engineers were enticed to work there so they could cut their teeth on games tech instead of standard micro-services. Now, they’re frantically battling against external candidates for the few internal roles available.
My small tech company (which I really liked working for) had < 100 employees. We struggled through a few near-death experiences because of slow sales and panic from our original investors, then we got saved for a few years after being purchased by a larger company (with around 1000 employees). Then that larger company (a small player in the networking equipment genre) got bought by probably the largest player in that space, and within six months everybody from the 1000-person company (excepting a few c-suite types) were laid off - the company had only been acquired in order to eliminate a very minor competitor. There is no safety in small.
I guess you’ve missed the pretty regular news of big companies firing entire teams and even (literally) decimating their head count.
From the point of view of a worker, unless it’s in a country with proper work legislation, the safety as a whole of the company one works for is pretty much uncorrelated with the safety of one’s job.
The reason why you lose your job being “company went bankrupt” rather than “the CEO cut headcount to boost profits” isn’t going to make the result for you be any different.
That idea that large companies are safer is very 1980s.
Smaller companies offer much less safety, though.
If a project is late at Google, you can pull in resources from other projects, delay the release, etc.
If a project is late at a small company, that could mean bankruptcy, even if everyone pulls 80h workweeks.
I personally would prefer a company that is just small enough not to require much corporate bullshit, while still having enough buffer to survive rough patches.
My current project is together with Cap Gemini and holy shit are those guys corporate drones. Absolutely horrible.
I’m not so sure that’s true in big tech any more.
When goals aren’t met, or projects don’t show validity in the market, those teams get wound down and the employees are laid off. Moonshot projects still exist, but it’s not uncommon to see execs be parachuted into new orgs with the plebs being fired.
Not really, especially not in countries with sane workers rights. Google won’t just fire a bunch of people because a project is a bit late. They’ll finish the project, eat up the costs and maybe decide later on what to do.
Of course, given the absurdity of the US labor laws, big corporations will also fire people, but ceteris paribus, a larger corporation will be more likely to be able and willing to keep you employed than a smaller shop.
That’s definitely not what’s happening right now at Amazon (where I work), and based on what I’ve heard from coworkers from Google and Meta, it’s basically the same story over there.
Hell, we’ve just had another layoff in our Games division, and many software engineers were enticed to work there so they could cut their teeth on games tech instead of standard micro-services. Now, they’re frantically battling against external candidates for the few internal roles available.
My small tech company (which I really liked working for) had < 100 employees. We struggled through a few near-death experiences because of slow sales and panic from our original investors, then we got saved for a few years after being purchased by a larger company (with around 1000 employees). Then that larger company (a small player in the networking equipment genre) got bought by probably the largest player in that space, and within six months everybody from the 1000-person company (excepting a few c-suite types) were laid off - the company had only been acquired in order to eliminate a very minor competitor. There is no safety in small.
I guess you’ve missed the pretty regular news of big companies firing entire teams and even (literally) decimating their head count.
From the point of view of a worker, unless it’s in a country with proper work legislation, the safety as a whole of the company one works for is pretty much uncorrelated with the safety of one’s job.
The reason why you lose your job being “company went bankrupt” rather than “the CEO cut headcount to boost profits” isn’t going to make the result for you be any different.
That idea that large companies are safer is very 1980s.