[MichaelCrawford]

I definitely prefer small companies. My frustration with large companies is that at time I see the executives making ignorant decisions, and I am not in a position to point out to them a better course of action.

On the downside smaller companies may be unable to weather sales downturns. If you work for a small company you feel far more personally responsible for the livelihoods of your coworkers.

Small companies can adapt to changing market conditions quicker. An Apple evangelist who visited me at Working Software - where we had about 12 employees - expressed great envy at our ability to get new products to market quickly. One very real example was that I once said "Hey Dave, it would not be hard at all to modify Toner Tuner's code in a very small way to make a hardcopy watermarking utility". That resulted in Working Watermarker after only a few days work, which was a huge hit.

The big advantage of big companies is that sometimes they can take losses for substantial periods of time. However you might get the axe in a big layoff. I'd rather be with a small company, so I can see it coming.