[jarjoura]

That's not completely fair. Startups want and need more experienced employees and cannot afford to bring in new grads at the scale bigger corporations can.

Facebook, for example, has an entire org that focuses just on internships and new grads. They are offered space and time to learn and grow. Some may still fall through the cracks, but far less so than at a startup that doesn't have the resources to hand hold.

At a big company you can learn how to be a team player and specialize in areas that are interesting to you. At a small company you learn how to become a jack of all trades and must cover your bases.

[benmathes]

yeah, hence "at best". There are bigco's where you'll stagnate. There are startups where you'll only learn how to make CRUD apps in rails.