The hard part about choosing the small business route is you have to do a really good job (and somewhat get lucky) at screening the owner and company. I had only ever worked at mega corps my entire carrier until my latest job at a <100 employee founders run company. The company is post "come join our startup and try to make crazy money/change the world" but pre "as you can see on document 3 section 7 process 4 paragraph 2 item 2a sub iii it says we next need to get approval..." and has a solid income stream already while also focusing on sustainable growth rather than max growth. I knew one of the founders from back in the day and was able to meet with the other and some of the senior management and a few of the engineers multiple times before joining. I wouldn't have jumped at the time had I not had a similar level of confidence that I knew what the people and day-to-day were like.

Now I could have missed some red flags or just had bad luck and regretted it/had a bad experience but just passing a year in I'm happier than ever with work and really excited about the future for at least the next 2-3 years (after that will depend on what the company looks like at that point).

At the same time one could have missed red flags or just had bad luck with $MegaCorpN too. The company I left ended up outsourcing it's entire IT staff of thousands and rehiring a few core architects who now are all disappointed with the workload and most are looking elsewhere if they haven't already jumped ship. I've actaully worked toa get a few of those folks to come over to my current place.

>the owner took everything personally

I mean, it's important to pick the right owner. It's PARAMOUNT you be personally compatible.

I've been at the same place for 14+ years for a reason.

There's a middle-ground. Aim for 50-200, and private. Small enough to be treated like a person, big enough to have an HR department.

> At a big company, everyone is spending someone else's money and the people at the top realize they can't (and shouldn't!) change course every 3 mo.

tell that to the google messaging teams :-D

Third point: I've worked with nice owner for about 3 years and last year he merged companies with someone who can barely write and berates his developers on zoom calls.