Choosing the right company size as a software engineer
I recently changed jobs and one aspect I struggled with was figuring out how large of a company I wanted to work for. I had only worked for small companies (<100 SWEs), though I had a few years of exposure to what engineering work at Facebook was like through my consulting there. I did a lot of research into which would be best for me and wanted to share some of my findings here. Different sizes for different times in your career Different sizes yield different experiences. For a large company, you'll likely end up focused on a very narrow subject matter and learning that to much greater depth. For a smaller company, you'll likely get much more breadth of exposure but likely won't learn any of the technologies with as much depth. So if you're just starting out in your career and you go to a smaller company, you'll have a lot more you can put on your resume, but might not be able to answer more complex questions about those technologies. The same applies to role: ...