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Pros and cons of getting a job at a very small software company? (14 employees)

I have the opportunity to maybe get a job as a software developer at a small software company that employs 14 people. But my gut is telling me that getting a job at a small company like that might he terrible. Do you guys have any experiences working at companies that small?

In my mind, I imagine the CEO would have a very large presence at the company and everyone would feel a lot of pressure to appease him. I imagine that the whole company would just be a boys’ club. But I guess any company can be like that, so maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, and the size of the company isn’t actually related to company culture?

Please let me know if you have any thoughts.

EDIT: The company has been around for two decades

sheogorath ,

I actually started at my current company when there were only 12 employees total. Now we’re 100+ employees. I witnessed the shift from a small company to medium sized.

When I started, the CEO was very present in day to day operations in the company. We hold a weekly meeting and everyone gets to share their updates and the CEO is involved in the day-to-day operations in the projects.

I lucked out having an excellent CEO so my experience is great when we’re at the small company stage. However since we’ve scaled up to be more than 100 employees there’s already middle management and what we did needs to be filtered thru the middle management.

Unfortunately the middle management layer is not as great as the CEO. So I’ve been contemplating moving to another company but the pay is good and I work remotely, but I’ve been looking around to see if there’s better options.

cooopsspace ,

The upside could be huge, this is where millionaires are made if you kick arse and get stock options…

The downside would just be culture. Can you hack it? Got a thick skin? There probably isn’t an HR to complain to.

KeepFlying ,

A small company like that likely won’t have policies and processes to fall back on. This can be good for some things, but when things go bad it can backfire.

Mainly for things like promotions, HR, complaints, etc. In big companies there’s a formal process for how to get promoted and what’s expected at each level, etc. Same for HR complaints. At a small company you’re going to be more subject to the whims of whoever is in charge.

Same for new projects. In a big company you have red tape and processes to blame when something fails, but in a small company it’ll be more likely to be “your fault”.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

Mainly for things like promotions, HR, complaints, etc

Haha this is such a good point.

The CEO took us to lunch and said to me, “I don’t know if your people like the Olive Garden or not.” Which if I was to report to HR, that would be HIS BROTHER.

I also didn’t get a promotion because I don’t go to his golf outings.

Oh and his wife was a CTO and she once asked me why I release software with bugs in them. That was when I started applying for other jobs.

CetaceanNeeded ,

I worked for a small software company for 6 years after finishing uni. I was the first person the founders hired. It was a great time and I learnt a lot and got to make a lot of decisions and had a lot of freedom.

But they didn’t pay anywhere near as much as a corporate job so when I got offered significantly more money to work for a very large company the small company couldn’t match it and pushed me to take it as a huge career and development opportunity.

It’s been great working at the big company but I really miss the culture and involvement I had at the small company.

mojo_raisin ,

I’ve worked at both small companies as small as about 12, all the way to massive fortune 100 companies (as a trans woman). Big companies get you many perks and often a very nice campus. But I’ve had better experiences mostly at the small companies.

The “boys club” thing never materialized too much, coworkers were decent people and I made great friends Never had a problem being trans at work. But the size definitely affects culture. Large companies have a fake explicit (not bad words, I mean explicit as in well defined and stated) culture shoved down your throat, small companies tend to have an organically formed culture. Big companies often attract leaders with high levels of narcissism highly driven to succeed and you have to deal with their tantrums. Startups attract unique people, still driven but in a different way.

One thing to be aware of at small companies though, is that many of these companies were formed for the purpose of being acquired, so their goal isn’t to be a cool company, it’s to do whatever it takes to be an attractive acquisition target which often sucks.

Even in a small company, the CEO is either going to be busy doing other things not managing IT, if they do manage IT, they would be no different than any other boss.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

I’ve done both large companies, small startups, did freelancing, anything for a paycheck. I now am a engineer for a major company with 10k employees and there’s so much that I picked up that would have made my life easier when I worked at a small company.

At a small startup, I absolutely was the jack of all trades developer. Everything from setting up infrastructure to web development. I was paid well but I didn’t feel like I knew anything. We were always in rush mode. I remember working 60hr weeks for months because we had so little revenue and we’re trying to save the company.

At a small company of 20 ppl, I was senior developer #3. There were only three developers. All seniors apparently, but paid like 30% less than our counterparts in other cities. The drama was so stupid. Everything was done because “That’s how we did it.” So much reinventing the wheel. The lead senior belittled and was a awful human. When I quit and joined my current job, he asked me for a recommendation. I still gave it, but he failed the first round of technical questions.

The cons of working at a small company?

  • Too many hats.
  • You are in charge of the domain. If you take two weeks off, you will get phone calls.
  • It’s only as good as the experts involved. Good Project managers and testers are a godsend and may not exist in small companies.
  • I was paid well but being in revenue talks and the “we have two months of runway before the whole company shuts down” is so incredibly stressful.

There’s pros too. But at my experience level and current lifestyle, I love turning off my laptop for the day and coding my own stuff on the side.

Blackmist ,

Yeah, been at mine for 25 years now.

Pros: Good job security.

Cons: Not much money.

Paragone ,

Invest-in, read, & consider the implications of,

“The Slicing Pie Handbook”.

Then consider whether you’re getting equity or mere-paycheck,

then consider whether the circumstances make that particular context, & particular pay-regime, a risk you aren’t long-term accepting.

Also invest in 2 books on the enneagram, “The Modern Enneagram”, the one by 2 women, 1 of whom is Bell, iirc, not the other one with the same name, & “Taking Care of Your Type”,

& consider how well those 2 specific ones get you, then do your own analysis of the ones who’d be affecting your life.

The more you understand what you’d be in for, the better for you, right?

The 1st mentioned Modern Enneagram book has links to scientific papers, if you want that background.

Fades ,

Some thoughts to keep in mind, speaking from my own experiences:

A small company is a higher risk in many regards, less ability to remain solvent during difficult times, less resources so more pressure on the smaller workforce, things like that.

From a dev perspective, you are also limiting the number of similar or better co-workers you could interact with which reduces exposure to things that came to them with experience that you don’t have yet.

hperrin ,

I’ve worked at two smaller companies like that. I had a great experience at one of them, and a mediocre experience at the other one. So, I feel like it’s probably just hit or miss depending on the company.

reddig33 ,

Pros — probably more influence over the quality of the product. You won’t be answering as much to marketing.

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