[notauser]

Part of the reason this is true is because a big company can afford to make bigger mistakes without going under, so they are a really great place to observe systemic errors that you can identify and learn to avoid.

Some examples - indecisive culture, personal perception coloring risk assessment, acceptance of poor performance. These are fundamental problems that you get when you gather humans into groups and knowing how to beat them is critical. In a big company you can see them all while a small company hides them better out of necessity.

One other thing to consider is that because big companies are able to take bigger risks they are a good place to get a jump in responsibility early. We have interns handling projects that would break a startup if they went off track.

[aneesh]

Au contraire! You should be able to get more responsibility at a startup.

Startups don't have room to pay you to work on something that's not mission-critical. Big companies do.