I'm not convinced that big organisations teach you more than smaller ones, given how hands on you have to be at a smaller shop and how sclerotic larger ones are.

You learn a lot more about the process itself in smaller companies across the board. In larger companies that only happens in the higher level roles. In larger companies your secondary and tertiary skills also become significantly more important.

Ultimately I prefer working with people that have experience in both.

Engineers who've only worked in smaller companies tend to be harder to work *with*, on a social inter-colleague level.

Engineers who've only worked in larger companies tend to be less capable when left to their own devices, they need more help if there is less demarcation. Engineers who've worked in smaller teams tend to pick up the slack proactively, from larger teams retro-actively.

At least that's been my experience both from within as well as without. (Currently working for a small company that has large corporate clients, have worked for small and corporations before that)

Engineers who've only worked in smaller companies tend to be harder to work with, on a social inter-colleague level.

I definitely skew that way - anything in particular I might want to watch out for, that would play out as "hard to work with" in a big company setting?

IMO:

- Inability to play politics for longer than 2hrs, let alone months,

- Self-selection, skilled people go to startups, and people who can maintain interest despite tons of paperwork to fill in, go to large companies (sometimes they’re as skilled, but it’s not the most important, 80% as skilled and able to run through processes is better).