I hope you continue to explore other places in the design space, but calling people evil because you disagree with them makes people disengage. It makes you look like just another zealot screaming his viewpoint into the uncaring masses.
Some of the stuff megacorps are doing is so unethical that we would use it as a grandiose example for the purpose of debate. If there is a point at which it's acceptable to call behavior out as unethical, and we aren't there yet, then I don't know where it is.
Is a city bad or good? It is both. Complexity is unavoidable. Different experiences in a large corporation happen.
I've personally seen counterexamples to every single point you've made, and they are not isolated.
Your failure to acknowledge that points directly at the most obvious bias -- your own.
I've worked at small smaller companies and actually had the opposite experience. Way more NDAs, way more issues with HR (at a megacorp, it's true that HR might not give a shit on a personal level about outcomes when there's issues. I'll take that over the situation where HR is a blood relative or close personal friend of someone involved in an issue). This sort of vague apathy is awesome--I can make code contributions to a team I've never met and they're happy to accept them. At smaller companies I've worked at, crossteam collaboration was a lot more difficult because everyone had a little fiefdom they wanted to protect.
Even though I don't think (reasonable) NDAs are that big of a deal, I had way more of them at a smaller company. A bigger company is much more vertically integrated so they aren't necessary. And it's not like I'm gonna impress people at a party by reciting proprietary Xilinx datasheets.
That's not what I said. I said the following:
>This post wasn't written for you[, a person who already works at a megacorp. The article is written for an audience who is considering a job at one.]. People who have already drunk the kool-aid [i.e. already works at a megacorp] need a much different approach to break their cognative dissonance[, a natural human bias which makes it difficult to critically examine oneself].
I annotated it here for clarity, but I understand that my comment relies heavily on context for this interpretation to work, and I understand how that would cause you to read it differently.
For the record, I also disagree with a lot of what was written in your post as straight of factually wrong. My manager's manager's manager's manager does know my name, for example. I do work that I choose almost entirely, my work has direct and meaningful impact on a problem I personally care about a lot (my friends and family care a lot too), and I've been able to be one of the primary voices involved in pushing an entire org of hundreds to change a major strategic approach over the last several years. I've never been asked to sign a non-compete.
There are problems with major companies. They aren't for everybody. That's fine. But telling people that they are just blind for disagreeing with you is just awful.
I worked at a megacorp in big tech for many years. They do not have non-compete clauses (and I'm in a state that allows them). I also never signed an NDA with them. People leave them all the time after disputes and not one that I know of suffered after they left. You contradict yourself in talking about how hell bent megacorps are in making money, and then talk about them spending 100x your salary on lawyers to go after you. Sorry, most "you's" are not worth even 10% of your salary to go after. You leave, and both you and the company move on.
> They could hurt you, and they could make you hurt others. Don’t fall for their propaganda.
This is definitely true, but as the GP said, it's quite simple to leave if you this is the concern. While there, I interviewed for an internal position that involved work for China that sounded to me like part of their mass surveillance program. I don't really know if that was the case, but it was trivial for me to decline their offer.
And I've found plenty of non-megacorps involved in hurting others. They merely do not have the scale that big megacorps do.
It sounds like you're conflating Internet companies, and FAANG, with megacorps. Most megacorps are not one of these.
Some people do get to do very interesting work, although broadly speaking, you are correct - you are most likely going to be a cog in someone else's dream job.
They occasionally do invest in people. They gave a coworker $50K to get an MBA (which cost a lot more, but they did contribute a nice sum), with no strings attached. He left soon after getting the MBA. They really shouldn't be this nice.
As for autonomy, it does seem independent of size. My last job at that company had quite a bit of autonomy. I got to pick the tech stack. Work wasn't assigned to me - I had to go examine the needs of the department and propose solutions - make prototypes and if it seemed useful then make it into an internal product.
> You will probably be much happier at a small to mid-size company.
Compared to where I worked, most of these companies in my area have some combination of these:
1. Pay less (and I don't get FAANG salaries - perhaps 60% or less)
2. Work you as much if not more (my life in megacorp had good work/life balance - and when it didn't, I'd simply do an internal transfer).
3. Are less stable. I spent 10 years in the megacorp. Most people I know working at medium sized companies simply did not have the choice to spend that much time there.
4. Are more at the mercy of market forces, often making it equally unlikely you'll get to do cool work. The need to pay the bills is greater.
I've found that there is almost some sort of conservation law at work. As an example, most small companies where I find average people do real interesting work get paid pennies (as in, many of them could qualify for food stamps). Ditto for work/life balance. A friend worked a tech job in a medium company where he'd routinely go home at 3:30pm. Pay was average, but he had to pay almost all of his insurance (quite a bit for a family of 4). He nevertheless was happy with the compromise of a lower salary.
I'm not doubting tech companies exist that let me work in my city and are better on all these counts - just that they're harder to find and get into then big megacorp.
Not all big megacorps are FAANG - in fact, most of them are not. Do not extrapolate from outliers.
Sorry. It didn't address the concern.
> I know of people who suffered after they left, and a cursory internet search will turn up many more stories.
All outliers. How many people leave a company in frustration? And then how many does the company go after? A tiny fraction! Not even 0.1%, which would be huge. I don't think I can find even one case for the company I worked for. It's not a small company - definitely makes more net revenue than Amazon, and comparable to at least one other FAANG.
> There is no contradiction in what I said, if spending 100 units on a legal battle for a single employee would save them >100 units on the next employee (or as a consequence of an unfavorable legal outcome), then it would be worth the cost.
The conclusion follows the premise, but the premise is extremely rarely true.
> You were generating revenues which financed the project even if you didn't directly work on it.
I never understood the desire to compartmentalize and draw boundaries only where it is convenient for you. Just because it is within my company makes it no different from a medium sized company providing services to another company who is involved in evil, even if those services are not directly related. If you work for a payment processor and provide services to my company, then your own logic would make you as complicit as I am. Your service is helping my company in its business, which raises our revenue, which is funding evil. Why am I complicit just because I am an employee, and not you because your company is providing us a service? We're both providing services to my company. Why draw the boundary only to within the company?
And at the end of the day, this is a hypothetical. I do not know what that technology was being used for. Surveillance was merely something I could imagine it's used for. I chose not to get into the business, but the decision was the equivalent of "Do not go work for any company that makes video cameras, or components for video cameras." I would never suggest anyone follow such standards.
Regarding my 4 points, you missed the point of me listing them. I didn't say all medium companies follow those - I said they usually are some combination of those.
I'd happily work for a medium company that has the positive attributes you speak of. I just have trouble finding them, let alone getting hired by them. I'm not at all anti-medium size company or pro-megacorp. When I apply to companies, I generally get a higher response rate with megacorps than with medium sized companies.
Occam's razor. If you have actual studies/statistics to support your case, I'll be happy to reconsider. But I'd wager I know a lot about the company I spent a decade at than you do.