[lapitopi]

Always take other people’s experience with a grain of salt. You don’t know their motivations or their biases or even their situation.

Even if what you just read is 100% true, it’s from someone else's perspective. So you don’t know what you are missing.

I have worked in both big companies and small. Politics abound in all of them. In my opinion company culture plays a large role in how toxic the place really is.

Another factor is your manager. Sometimes they can even compensate for toxic culture by shielding you from it and having a pleasant environment to work in. Unfortunately I have not been able to come up with a great set of questions to divine whether someone is a good manager or not. It totally depends on how much they believe in having your back vs having their own backs.

Don’t let experiences like these discourage you. There are plenty of big companies where you can have a sizeable impact because team sizes are small and the work is challenging. And there are plenty of small to mid size companies that are just surviving from one round of funding to the next on the whims of their investors.

Only way to find out is ask a lot of questions and try a few of them.