My experiences with the tech giants have featured neither autonomy, fun, nor anything resembling a work-life balance; they do pay well, but not well enough to make that kind of experience worthwhile. Life is here to be lived, not put off for later, and I'm not going to waste mine grinding away on a bunch of tedious bullshit so long as I have an alternative.

Then again, here I am writing from my cubicle at yet another tech giant, which recently acquired the startup I was working for, and it's been a much better experience so far. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up sticking around for a while.

The big companies I have worked with have always had legacy software and slow moving projects. (Edit: 2 out of 3 of the big companies I have worked for. One was very cool, but the location was absolutely terrible).

My own experience has been mostly low/mid-tier companies (software factories mostly) and they are terrible: slow moving, legacy and uninteresting projects; low motivation; no highly qualified people to learn anything from; nobody cares if the damn thing works.

My current job is at a relatively big company. Fast moving projects, interesting tech (depending on the project), high motivation, lots of very knowledgeable coworkers. Granted, my experience is a really small sample (1 out of 1) and I've never worked for a startup so I can't compare. One of my friends has been struggling with his own startup for some years, and while the tech is interesting, his day to day is very stressful (and highly focused on staying afloat) and I wouldn't want it for me.