> smaller companies usually offer much more freedom to implement your ideas

Not really, if I come up with a novel algorithm or a different architecture to do a task better at Google then they will give me the chance to implement it even if it takes months or years. Small companies doesn't care about your ideas, they just want a cog that can give them a basic website because that is all they need, novel things doesn't help them.

If you mean "novel product ideas" then sure, but we aren't product managers we are programmers so our ideas would mostly be related to architecture or algorithms.

Then you've been at different small companies than I have. Obviously if you're the only person in tech at that company it's hard to do groundbreaking stuff. But small tech companies solve challenges everyday. And being able to directly convince the CEO (who is often technical at these companies) can make decisions much quicker than at large companies.

> small tech companies solve challenges everyday

Yes, just not challenges that requires ideas to solve. They are mostly just following the same path every other tech company went, re implementing the same systems. To them it doesn't matter if the system is better or worse, they just want a system since going from 0 to 1 is huge, meaning that they wont give you time or resources to implement your idea, they just want a cheap idea.

It depends on what you mean by "smaller." At the majority of smaller companies, it's just CRUD app stuff, probably in C#, with significantly less freedom (often beholden to very non technical middle management).

Is that bad? You can solve interesting challenges in C# with CRUD stuff. Nothing that scales to millions of users, but there are challenges other than scaling.

>At the majority of smaller companies, it's just CRUD app stuff, probably in C#, with significantly less freedom

This is a very strange point-of-view.

I've worked in "small" (~100 employees or fewer) business my entire career, and not once was it strictly CRUD stuff in C#.

The freedom is debatable, I guess, since I have no experience at larger companies, but I certainly never found that my freedom is confined. Most often there is opportunity to contribute anywhere and everywhere, and management is happy to have the help.

I'm not a dev but still highly technical, and devs turning their noses up at "CRUD stuff" always makes me laugh. It reminds me of the musicians I know who won't play in certain styles because it's not "meaningful" or "true to their artistic vision". Bud I was at your last gig, you don't sound that great even when you're playing "meaningful" music.

Similarly, most of the devs I've worked with that are obsessed with "exciting" work still turn out pretty questionable stuff, and their careers would probably be better served if the built out a "simple" CRUD app, took it really seriously, and then examined the effects of their design on other teams.

I'm the sole developer at a non-tech company, and I have near-complete freedom because management is non-technical (and humble enough to admit that). I really, really enjoy my current job. Not saying that's the norm, of course -- just adding a data point to the convo.