[GregHolmes]

If they're suffering from some form of burn-out or are in a bad way mentally right now, going to a smaller company can make it a lot worse. Smaller companies tend to expect you to wear multiple hats, lots of context switching. It can worsen the situation for them.

[xupybd]

Yeah I'm in a small company. I'm the entire IT department. It was a great way to get my mind back after burning out. I was counting physical stock at the end of each day for the first year. That downtime was a brilliant way to get some time to think. I felt productive every day, even if I was stuck on a technical problem.

Now I get to pick the technology I work with and drive a lot of change. I really feel like I'm making a difference and my efforts are worth it. Before I felt the harder I tried the worse I did. Everything was out of my control and replying to. Short email could take me a couple of hours. I couldn't think, in couldn't learn, I was broken.

[Aeolun]

Communication overhead kinda disappears when all the communication stays inside your own head :)

[sli]

Yep. OP's post sounds like I could have written it, and it's because small companies are absolute hell. You won't get benefits, you won't get health insurance, you won't get vacation days, your pay goes down below livable levels, and your proximity to clients shrinks dramatically. Investors have all the power and small dev shop owners worship them to the detriment of their employees.

Switching to a small shop will make the burnout exponentially worse.

[Aeolun]

Depends entirely on where you go to work. I've only ever worked in decent (actually fantastic) dev shops. Of course, pay was still not amazing, but it was full of smart and motivated people.

[daliusd]

I got lucky then :-)