What's important for choosing a job - Stability / Stimulation / Discovery?
Ben Casnocha rises a dilemma question - what is better for you and your career - stick with a stable but uninteresting job or move to an unstable but interesting one. He continues the with two options - work in a stable enterprise or become an independent self employed professional (either open your business or play as a contractor). The question echoes partly with another - where it's better to work - in a startup or in a big corporation. Then I looked at the question from an emotional side but today let's see what is better for your career - work independently, work in a startup (or any small company), or belong to a multi thousand work force organization.
The essence of the difference is in the level of responsibility and an amount of new things to learn which are both usually inversely proportional to the boredom of the job and stability.
In a startup (or any small organization) you deal with lots of things, unanswered questions emerge almost daily, and the company lives in a mode of permanent lack of resources. Naturally you're responsible for many different things and learn a lot (on every position and each level in a startup). Necessity is the mother of invention characterizes the startup environment.
In a big, stable company your role is quite defined. There are processes, policies, and separation of work. Hardly a DB admin will be developing UI or Java programmer building a system of automated tests. For many people a passed year doesn't deposit any new values to the account of the learned things. Changing positions takes time, favorable conditions, and eventually luck.
A drawback of a startup is its stability but it's not the only weak side of it. If you don't work in a successful startup your career history is not very visible. If you work for a big brandy enterprise its success sticks to you too. In startups there is nothing to take (besides the knowledge).
An advantage of a big company is you can change your profession (not even a position) without changing your job. I've seen many former developers shifted their careers to sales folks, marketing guys, consulting managers, or bizdev people (discussed it partially here). Also experiences gotten in a corporation is more applicable to a startup than the opposite direction. Corporations have global presence, massive product roll out, service field forces, consulting, support resources and you can change your roles (although every time quite sticking to something concrete) inside the company.
Clearly there is no black and white and for some people just the environment dictates their decision. A few friends of mine can't work in a big company with policies and processes although others can't stand the startup world. My advice for newcomers is this. When you're fresh and unexperienced - experiences is all - go to a small company where you can learn a lot. After 2-3 years of professional experience start thinking about a big, highly recognized enterprise with global presence and copious forces. Try it and taste it for a couple of years and then you'll feel and know what world better works for you. You'll also will know what roles you'd like to play. I'm sure there is no better or worse. Each case has its own pros and cons but we should clearly realize them and be aware of the differences.
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