Ask HN: Would you rather work for Google or a smaller high growth company?

The medium companies generally have a single true line of business and are focused on tuning & turning that crank, turning $3M/yr to $10-100M/yr. Doing something else makes you a trouble maker, and budgets are watched.

The bigger companies will have $100M-100B/yr revenue, so they'll do pretty insane engineering on the old product lines ("let's reimplement PHP with a modern VM!"), and take moonshots to enter new markets big enough to make a dent ("Let's give internet to everyone in Africa.") So both quality of life can be better and the projects can be more interesting and career defining.

So yeah, I'd go to bigco, or if a medco, one with enough ridiculous growth/funding to do insane things. But not a lot of years of your life that startups are easily doable, so I switched from R&D to startups, and can always go back later :)

I feel like there must be a lot of variance there --- what if the engineer(s) you were with are bad interviewers? What if it wsa a bad day? What if it was a bad time to interview?

In a big company, most risk has been removed from the equation. This is great for compensation and stability but also limits ones possible learnings as well. You might find your time learning the big company’s systems which don’t apply universally because they’re specific to that company’s needs.

In smaller companies, risk is still a real aspect of life. The downsides are obvious but the joys are that you’re closer to the customer and your actions have real impact. I find these types of learnings to be universal which is why I’m drawn to it.

One company, the process was a mess. The recruiter I worked with was fired in the process, which took a few days to sort out. It had many rounds of interviews, each expecting me to purchase material to study. One interview was absurdly bad, one of those 'well, that's not what it says on my paper' types. One interview the interviewer seemed almost condescending, asking questions with no possible one right answer.

Another company was much better in most regards, except when it came time for reimbursement. It was a bit 50/50 on whose fault it was, but it amounted to me being on the hook for a few hundred dollars. Not the end of the world, but I was sent a short rather cold message that made me feel like they thought I was trying to cheat them. I was trying to inquire about meeting me halfway, or what I could have done differently to avoid this, and never received a reply. As soon as I removed the flagged charges, it was paid and closed with no further communication. For a company who brags about perks and whatnot, the way they handled that turned me off. It was one of those 'notice how people treat people from who they have nothing to gain' moments. To add insult to injury, another group asked if I'd like to come back out. I replied rather short to that, which in retrospect I feel a little bad about.

That said, it is true I didn't work for those companies. But to me, a recruiter or interview process is a first impression. It's their face to me.

If I'm off base, though, I'd love to hear tales from others.

Edit to add - I will name one company that I really liked their interview...a company in Texas called Meteora. They were using tech way ahead of its time when I interviewed. They never asked me filter questions, or treated me like 'another applicant.' I talked to a competent engineer who explained what they did, what was needed, and their tech stack. I was honest in having no experience with this stack, and they were honest in telling me I wouldn't be a good fit. I wish all interviews were as simple.