Startup, Mid-size, Enterprise

Startup, Mid-size, Enterprise

▶️ I've had the chance to work at companies of different sizes, and I decided to share where I personally saw the differences, pros, and cons.

Startup

⏩ Working at startups (up to 50 people) is fun, lively, chaotic, sometimes a fire drill, but there's a strongly noticeable, obvious connection between what you did and its effect on the company. Maybe because when you take down production, it's really hard not to notice)) Or you optimized server costs to leave more budget for advertising. And if you also write the backend, then you can influence the outcome even more.

Among the downsides is the need to build out various processes, while the code and infrastructure don't yet have strict guidelines. As a rule, there isn't even infrastructure-as-code. Nevertheless, I still enjoy working at such companies — I love putting everything in order.

Mid-size

⏩ At a mid-size company (around 100+ people) a bit less depends on you, since in theory your role should be duplicated by a second and maybe a third person.

However, despite the larger number of employees, you still directly influence the functioning of the company's products. Among the pros is an established approach to development and releases, as well as widespread use of tools like terraform, helm, ansible for working with infrastructure.

Enterprise

⏩ At corporations (1000+ employees) your role becomes more narrowly specialized, and your influence on the end result drops noticeably. Processes are strictly regulated, every step requires approvals, and decisions are made at the top level.

Among the pros are stability, a clear structure, and the opportunity to work with large-scale systems. However, the bureaucracy and slow decision-making can be irritating. Infrastructure solutions have already been built up over the years, and making changes requires thorough justification. Nevertheless, it's a great opportunity to gain experience working on large projects and to understand how complex systems function.

By and large, the difference between mid-size and large companies is only in the stability and variety of products, but as a rule you still work on a team of the same size and deal with the same set of colleagues.