I worked at a 12-person startup forseveral years, and then moved on to one of those mega, we-have-eighty-acquisitions-type of conglomerate. Here are the key differences:
Startup:
- Forced to come into the shitty warehouse office so “we can see all your smiling faces”
- Having the CEO sit in an office directly across from you so he passively-aggressively complains to your manager when you text on your lunch break
- Getting passive aggressive emails about Instagram hogging the office bandwidth (I switched to mobile data after that lol)
- Two people quitting because of said CEO meaning I have to take on their jobs with no reprieve in sight
- Being casually bullied into performing job functions I'm not comfortable with (e.g. handling sales orders, recruiting, etc. when I'm a coder) because “we all need to adaptable.”
- Watching your permanent desk setup with all your notes and documentation get dismantled for a hotdesking setup because “they need the space”
- Watching the company hire an insane consulting firm that advises them to deny promotions to two of their most loyal employees in order to avoid “title changes”
Giant company:
- Pointless 3-hour meetings with 200 people where the department head goes over some project you have no part in
- Constant talk about how AI is totally gonna “supplement” our work and not replace our job functions, haha
- Watching the CEO demand people stand up and clap for him during the company all hands
- Constant vague insinuations/threats to drag remote workers back to the office, even if they live halfway across the continent and were hired remote
- Long emails about “realigning our resources for the New Year”
- Getting invited to meetings to “work on our mission statement”
- Watching talented and hardworking coworkers get laid off, and then watching the CEO claim that they weren't layoffs, but “resizing our resources to the company needs”
- Watching the company Q&A during the monthly all-hands get shut down when people immediately question the “not-layoffs”
TL:DR it's all stupid and shitty. Anyone who is a CEO is a sociopath.