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RE: Corporate World vs. Small Company: Considerations?
Subject:RE: Corporate World vs. Small Company: Considerations? From:"Gale Stafford" <gstafford -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:23:14 -0500
Amy (and others who are thinking of job-switching)
I have worked salary and contract positions in a bunch of different
environments: in small non-profits of 80-100 people, a large public
university, small software company 80-100, tiny software company consisting
of 3 folks, a 200+ employee engineering company, a 200+ employee e-book
publishing company.
The small non profit of 80-100 people was the best. Here are some benefits I
saw which might also come with other orgs of a similar size
+ Agile and adaptive organization overall (didn't have the bureaucracy seen
in big public non-profits like .gov or .edu orgs)
+ Fun people (might have been more of a result of the non-profit's mission,
though)
+ Lots of variety, which meant more opportunities to learn and develop new
skills
+ Fellow coworkers felt more like family than coworkers
But there was one disadvantage: the pay was rather low. For the San
Francisco area, my pay was definitely on the lower end of the spectrum.
Tom Peters (http://tompeters.com) and Seth Godin
(http://sethgodin.typepad.com/) both talk a lot about the benefits of
smaller organizations. Their views match up pretty well with my life
experiences. ;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-169296 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-169296 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Amy P.
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 8:32 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Corporate World vs. Small Company: Considerations?
I'm being offered a position in a smaller office setting with 1980s
decor and a beautiful commute through trees instead of construction
and blight. The company is developing new scientific instrumentation
that seems to be cutting edge, highly technical, and doing well. They
will train me to use the products and consider me part of the
engineering team. I like the homey, brainy, low-key atmosphere. That
said, they can't match what I'm making, and will likely come in
$10,000-$20,000 less.
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