I feel like for so many in our field, the dream is to work at Facebook/Google/Amazon/Netflix/etc. For a while I thought I might wind up at a place like that someday as well, but nowadays, I think I'd rather not.
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The biggest deterrent to me is potential ethical issues. Any company can behave unethically, but huge tech companies have the scale to do massive harm. Even with the best intentions, I feel like I'd be constantly stressed about unintended consequences.
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(I don't blame or judge anyone who works for these companies. There's a strong case to be made for joining them, since y'all are the ones who can help steer the ship away from the iceberg. We need good ppl at these companies. I just don't have the fortitude.)
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Another factor: I just really dig working at smaller companies. I love the amount of ownership you get, the fact that you can wear different hats, the ability to see your fingerprint in the final product.
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You can't beat big tech salaries, and startup equity is
... but when cost-of-living is taken into account, you can earn a ridiculously good living working remotely for a venture-backed startup. Mid-tier Bay salary in cheap cities is where it's at 

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I think some folks really like the idea of the impact you get working at a big company, and it's true that if you want to reach BILLIONS, there aren't many options. I'd wager that if you divided the reach by the number of employees, though, some companies would be competitive
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For example:
@unsplash is the 359th most popular website on the internet, globally. When I worked there, our dev team was like 5 people. It was pretty darn cool to have so much say over a product that shipped to so many people.2 replies 1 retweet 37 likesShow this thread -
I could keep going, but I'm curious what y'all think, especially if your perspective is different from mine. If you do work for one of these companies, what's your favourite part? If you aspire to, how come?
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Replying to @JoshWComeau
The impact you can have in large companies is huge. That goes both for the negatives and the positives. If you improve http://gmail.com account theft prevention by a measly 5%, how many identity theft victims did you prevent?
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Replying to @delroth_ @JoshWComeau
The same argument applies for a lot of abuse related jobs: if you improve a phishing classifier by just a bit, it's thousands of users' bank login info that you prevent from going to criminals. And pretty much everyone (even Firefox) uses Google services for this (Safebrowsing).
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Other minor benefits: a fairly stable job situation, a lot of transfer opportunities when you get bored with $project, predictable stupidly high income, and at least at Google the possibility to try and fight back the unethical things from the inside when they pop up.
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