+1. Worth saying this is also not at all a software engineering thing, it’s a large organization thing. I found I could easily discuss career leveling with non-technical government employees. In fact they have much more context than my friends in software engineering that never worked for large companies.
True.
Except for the economics part, it is much more fulfilling to work for a smaller company.
Except for the money - the entire reason most people work everyday…
I’m 51, worked at two F10 at the time companies out of my ten jobs and hated them both - GE and 8 years later Amazon. I purposefully made the choice of pursuing a smaller company and ignoring constant outreach from Google (GCP consulting division). But let’s not dismiss the close to $100K diference I could be making than what I make now.
Also a 25 year old SA that I mentored at AWS three years ago is making the same as I am making. They are an L5 (mid level) and I am a staff consultant. They are pre-sales (no commission) and I am implementations.
Money is a factor.
I went from, if not scraping by, never really recovered from dot-bomb to a pretty good job at a medium-size public company latterly. It was "mostly" good. But the difference in money set me up in a way that I previously really wasn't (even if not top tech levels).