[throwaway74688]

> So to "make it," you effectively have to grow into a BigCo employee anyway.

Currently at a startup that is angling for IPO and it got very corporate in a hurry. I'm finding it fascinating to experience, but it has more in common with a BigCo now without as much of the upside.

[xemdetia]

I think that's the other thing that happens, the transitioning to normal corporate practices ends up being a culture shift that ends up breaking a lot of people's interest in an organization. There is a reason why some of the bureaucracy exists at BigCo and people have to experience that in a culture that may be hostile to it. It also in those early stages doesn't have the years or decades of practical application of BigCo processes that have been figured out and tailored specifically to a company in question and there's just teething problems all over that make the whole effort more frustrating as these new business processes get figured out.