Don't kid yourself about small companies. Unless you're the owner, you're a fungible cog everywhere.

In fairness, anyone can leave at any time. Your employer, regardless of size, has to be prepared for the possibilty that you'll quit for a better job, or for some other reason. It would be inadvisable to get emotionally attached to employees.

The reason you're less likely to get laid off at a small company is that small companies don't have the capital to hire indiscriminately, so they're less likely to have large inefficiencies. The number of employees is already as low as they can get away with, given their current revenue, so only a significant downturn in revenue would justify layoffs.

Smaller companies also have a hard time hiring. A bad hire for your 7th employee is way more painful than for your 1000th, and you can't afford to spend to much time interviewing. If employee 7 does a good job and jives with the team, they'd be foolish to throw them out. Though I'm sure there genuinely are many small companies run foolishly out there.

Small companies (whether VC-funded or bootstrapped) have their own issues. They tend to be different from what you see at big companies but they're certainly not nirvana.

The worse relationship I've had were in small companies. "Oh but we're so small we cannot afford raises" coming from the same people that are selling it millions later in the year.

> The smaller the company, the better.

I disagree. There is a lot of variance in small companies. There is a lot of variance in large companies as well (the famous "it will really depend on which team you belong to").

I really think there is little correlation between company size and your experience at such company. The predictive variables (if they ever exist) are elsewhere.

In smaller company you are closer to person with the decision power. It is much easier to build closer relationship and have high visibility to avoid being laid off.

Companies, of all sizes, are run by people.

If those people are assholes, the size of the company doesn't matter, your employment in that company will suck.

While that is true, if any given person has some X% chance of being an asshole, the more layers of management there are above you, the higher the chances you are at the mercy of at least one (and possibly multiple) asshole(s).

You could use the exact same argument in the other direction: the more layers of management there are above you, the higher the chances a high-level managers will protect your team from armageddon. Sometimes, it's only a matter of a single email or a chat with a CxO.

I stand by my original point: no obvious correlation between company size and quality of life inside it.

True, the difference is you are more likely to get the experience you've heard from reviews in a small company vs complete unknown in a big company (may be great, may be crap depending on your line of management)

In my network we keep joining the same (relative small) companies because we roughly know the culture we can shape and create an environment

Smaller companies treat employees different, to an extent. Because in the end, regardless of company size, the owners expect a return of their investment. In case of owner-managed companies even more so.

To everyone their poison so, I guess. I learned that I am a large company guy, by a nature and nurture. Other people I know are the complete oppossite. One thing I learned so, no employee ever is safe. Not even lifetime employed state / public servants.

I thought this until a few days ago! At my “smaller company” of 150 or so employees, they just laid off a third of the company, and virtually everybody outside of the C suite was blindsided.

I think the posters who remind people that the employer/employee relationship is a business one have it right. We as engineers should strive as best as possible what our specific value is to a company. We should not delude ourselves into thinking we are more to the company than that. When we cease to have that value, or they cease to desire going down that path, they might end the relationship.

Honestly the size really doesn’t matter that much. As soon as it’s favorable you are out in ANY company. In my observational experience it’s only 10 to 20% companies who have heart and where they do actually try to maintain talent and foster good working relationships.

I think the size definitely matters, but I am not sure about the extent to which it matters.

I work at a company of roughly over 200 employees that is part of a much bigger org. Layoffs never happen where I am working. And one factor may be that HR has a different, in some cases personal relationship with their employees. That is certainly not the case in the parent org where large-scale layoffs happen every few years.

Edit: And I would not even attest that my company is one of those with a "heart", as you say.

Have you been working for this company for 20+ years?

There's a high chance you're just a "sweet summer child" who wasn't there the last time things were REALLY bad.

That is a valid point. But no, the company has been around for 31 years and I have only worked there for just over 8 years. I am confident however that no large-scale layoffs ever happened there, because I have heard all sorts of harrowing stories from "back then", abusive managers and the like, but layoffs were never mentioned.

Might be survivorship bias though because the people that could have been laid off in the first few years cannot be there to tell the tale, of course.