[josephorjoe]

I went from a big company to a small (<30 person) company and back to a big company, and I'd put my personal productivity drain for working at a big company at close to 20%.

The biggest contributors to that 20% are (1) extra admin overhead like time consuming performance appraisals and more red tape for purchases, reimbursements, time off, etc., (2) getting blocked sitting around waiting for some person/team whose priorities are not my priorities to respond to requests for info/support, and (3) additional reporting requirements in the form of meetings and extra emails/paperwork to keep other groups/managers updated on what I/my team am/is doing.

There is also a subtle productivity drain caused by the feeling of "why should I put in an extra hour today to finish this feature when release is probably going to be blocked by [some thing I cannot control]". So, I leave the work til tomorrow, but I lose all the mental context I have for the work and need to recapture that to get back to where I was, so what would have taken an hour yesterday takes 90 minutes today.

When I was on a 4 person team in a 25 person company, it absolutely felt like every extra effort I made had an impact and was noticed and appreciated, which inspired me to make extra efforts.

Now I feel like any extra energy I have should go into making sure I don't forget to get some form to HR by some important (but arbitrary) deadline or attending the latest mandatory training session my manager or IT has required me to go to or getting legal to approve use of that open source library we need.

[jbob2000]

On the flip side, when I worked at a small company, I felt like I had waaayyy to much power over the success/failure of the business. Yes, I can make an impact, but that impact could be negative; "If I fail, so does the whole company" was a common thought I had, it kept me up at night.

At a larger company, I can fail repeatedly and the machine will have my back. I find I am taking more risks at a larger company because of that.

I have some personal gripes with small companies too. Taking vacation was always an intense negotiation ("But jbob, we planned to do this work 6 months ago, if you take a vacation, the project is delayed and the client is unhappy!"). Cleanliness was a problem, irregular cleaning or I'd have to do it myself, the multinational I'm at now has the bathrooms cleaned 3 times a day and the floors and desks are cleaned every night. It was difficult to be critical of the smaller companies because I felt like I was insulting my "friends", whereas at the multinational, we guard our personal lives fiercely and have no problems criticizing business direction.

My job is not the place to do interesting things (though I am stimulated by the problems we have, even though they aren't always technical), that's what hobbies and free time are for.

[bpchaps]

Why not both? You can have interesting hobbies and an interesting job. For the same reason you should invest in a good bed in that it's a third of your life, you should invest in a job that interests you. Whether it's interesting is entirely up to you.

[iamdave]

This question doesn't deserve the downvotes its getting.

Some people can and want a job that feels like a hobby, but some people like to compartmentalize and want their job to definitely be engaging, but don't necessarily want that love affair hobby becoming a career. My last career was like this, I loved doing it as a hobby and thought I could parlay it into a career. More than 10 years later I hated it and was running at full-sprint for the door.

But I definitely understand that some people can make this work, and make it work phenomenally. Some people just don't want that level of overlap.

[maxxxxx]

"My job is not the place to do interesting things (though I am stimulated by the problems we have, even though they aren't always technical), that's what hobbies and free time are for. "

In my current job the workload is high but the work is often not very interesting or challenging. If I spend my whole day on boring stuff I am exhausted in the evening.

[harlanji]

Me too. Kinda envy GP, I had that for 4 months before the machine decided I was broken and ejected me. Now I only have energy between ShittySmallCo jobs because of the time and mind games they play for that moolah. Livin' the dream!

[afjl]

What does GP mean?

[lstyls]

Grandparent. The parent is the comment that is replied to. The comment the parent replied to is the grandparent. So in this case GP is @jbob2000.

[hamandcheese]

I find that there’s a good chance that I can safely ignore any “ACTION REQUIRED” email from anyone not my manager. So I do. Occasionally my manager gets a nastygram to relay to me, but he is super okay with that if it means I’m focused and productive.

[djtriptych]

Same. I do as much as I can in short bursts but past that I’ll just wait for someone to start threatening me. HR can’t fire engineers for dragging their feet anywhere I’m aware of. Never shown up on perf.