[willstepp]

I've worked at both large corporations and early-stage startups and for me a small software company is the ideal size (I've been at a company with < 100 employees for the past two years). From my experience you have more job security than a start-up but do not have to deal with the soul-crushing bureaucratic processes and politics of a corporation. You also have the ability to make a real impact as an individual and usually get to work with the latest technologies. I'm sure this varies in degrees from company to company but in general I've found it to be true.

[masokupride]

thanks for responding. could i ask you to go into more detail about what the experience of a relatively junior engineer looked like at these smaller companies?

Would you expect them to be given a task to complete or feature to implement or bug to fix, with some flexibility on how to solve that problem.

Alternatively, would you expect the work to be more like the color between the lines books we had as kids, where you are pretty much just doing the busy work of implementing a mostly predefined solution.

would you expect a developer to be able to choose what he worked on. would there be any flexibility in what language or libraries could be used, or would all of these decisions be made already.

what do you think are the most annoying things new developers do. Are there some common bad habits/ ways of thinking that one should try to avoid falling into.

[willstepp]

As a junior developer you do have flexibility, but there will more eyes on your work to make sure you're going down the right path, following the best practices...etc. Then as you establish a positive track record you are given more flexibility.

To an extent developers can choose what to work on, even juniors, but not completely. The product team and upper management decide which features and bug fixes have priority. But its common to be able to choose from a pool of projects what you want to work on, based on your experience or interests.

New developers are most annoying when they have not yet learned how to balance when to figure out a problem for themselves and when to ask for help, but its not their fault. Its just something you have to get a feel for.

Another annoying thing is being dogmatic about what they have learned and not considering that there may be equally valid alternative methods. But this applies to all developers.