better to work for a small or big company? 3

[ngedm]

Hello,
what would be the advantages and disadvantages of working for a small and for a big company?
Thank you once more
ngedm

 

[dik]

Larger firms generally have larger projects as well as a greater mix of professionals. For the first 10-15 years of your career I would suggest that you work for both for a duration of 2 or 3 years to pick up as much experience as possible. If you find a larger firm that offers an incredible variety, where the learning process is there, you might want to stay longer.

 

[breaks]

In general, larger firms tend to have greater job security. On the other hand, smaller companies generally have many more opportunities for advancement which can pay higher dividends in the future (better chance at stock options or other financial windfalls).

I work for a small office within a large firm and have had opportunities to help out on a wide variety of projects - from bridges and water treatment plants to a cruise terminal and sign structures. Also, as dik said, large firms give you more of an opportunity to learn from a wider variety of professionals. A smaller firm gives each employee more responsibility.

 

[LPPE]

I worked for a very small firm out of college. I learned alot, but didn't get paid squat. Also, the projects were usually small and local. I work in a medium sized (about 120 employees) firm now with a variety of disciplines and the variety and size of projects is great. And I also get paid reasonably well now. So in my opinion, I would work for a large office.

 

[JAE]

I've generally worked for firms in the 80 to 150 employee range and have found it to be very satisfying. Very small firms (1 - 4 engineers) give you instant responsibility, immediate client contact opportunities, and a chance to really learn how a business works.

Very large firms, on the other hand, will offer you different levels of opportunity....some firms are good, some are very very bad. I have a friend that went to work for a large firm who basically sat around all day with only nominal responsibilities and not a wide variety of projects. He told me that he'd done as much engineering design in 6 months at the large firm that he'd done in two weeks at our office.

Other pals in larger firms have expressed satisfaction at the large projects and have had good positions with few complaints.

If you're at the point of interviewing for a position - consider this: Ask whomever you are looking at to provide you with their resumes of key engineers who you'll be working for/under/with. That way you can see the kind of experience you will be drawing from at that firm.

 

[FSS]

JAE's last point is extremely important, especially if early in one's career. A large company should have lots of talented folks, but that does you no good if you do not get an opportunity to work with them. Sometimes all it takes is one or two people to make the difference regardless of size of company.

 

[haynewp]

My opinion is to stay away from large manufacturing corporations. We were all treated like money making tools for the management and marketing people and we received minimal respect. The work was very specialized. Went to another manufacturing company where there was more engineering going on yet the same corporate crap to put up with (cubicles, people that B.S. their way to the top, etc). Large consulting firms may be different.

 

[Ron]

Forgive me FSS, but I can't resist!!!

There are advantages and disadvantages to either, as has been pointed out. My greatest concern is something haynewp touch on...the de-professionalizing of engineers and engineering by treatment as a commodity. This is happening more and more in large firms, and will likely continue and worsen.

I have had the opportunity to work in one of the larger firms in the world (somewhere between ENR top 10 and ENR top 30 depending on the year), in a fairly high technical capacity (they cringe when I go near something administrative!). The resource sharing is great, the project mix is great, the technical challenges are great, and the people I worked with daily are some of the finest technical minds anywhere. But the technical people are getting farther and farther from the decision processes and are more and more driven by management greatly removed from the client service process. This can make life difficult, both logistically and emotionally with respect to morale.

I have been a sole practitioner (no one to blame but me!), which is fun, but limiting. I have worked in a small firm (I grew from just me to about a dozen people)and the challenges are fun, but you don't get the project mix and exposure to the really cool stuff!

I am now at a medium size firm (600 people)where I hope to realize some of the advantages of both the large firm and the small firm. Ideally, for a consulting practice, you would have the resources and exposure of a large firm with the autonomy of action of a small firm. I realize the naivete of this idealism, but what the hell... we can dream.

Besides, we're engineers...we get to work for 50 years 'cause we never make enough to retire, so we can sample a lot of what the profession has to offer!!

 

[dozer]

I've worked for both a small company and a very large company. There's no simple answer to your question because corporate culture plays such a large part of job satisfaction. In my case I preferred the larger company. But I have to tell you there was one issue that really influenced me (maybe more than it should have) and that was overtime pay. The large company paid engineers straight time for overtime the small company paid nothing for overtime. The latter just seemed fundamentally unfair to me so that really left a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm sorry but I don't agree with breaks that smaller companies have many more opportunities for advancement. At the small company I worked at the next step for me was engineering manager which did not pay much more (if any at all), then next was CEO, which I didn't see as obtainable and wouldn't want anyway. I think perhaps when I say small I mean really small, three design engineers. He might be think a bit larger or he's just had different experience than I have.

You do get a better understanding at a small company of the whole business picture.

As far as large companies go, in my case, I was part of a large team (max'd out at over 200 people from several different disciplines) on a huge project. Even though you think with this many people your contibutions would just get lost, I didn't feel this way at all. I enjoyed working with lots of different engineers not only in my own discipline of structural engineering but in other disciplines as well.

I think your doing the right thing by asking the question. Try to talk to people from both sides of the fence too. I could tell you a lot more than I care to type, plus I figure if I make this too long people will lose interest (if they haven't already).

 

[ngedm]

Thanks everybody who took the time to reply to my question. I would appreciate if more people feel like replying to this thread because it's a very important subject for a young engineer.

Also I'd like to ask if there's more mentorship in bigger companies? I feel that because a small company doesn't have the resources, they wouldn't be able to check your work. And by checking and pointing out the blunders I feel that I could learn a lot.

Thanks everybody

 

[Ron]

There's a difference between mentorship and checking work. Mentorship can be found in any size firm, but certainly a larger one has more resources to allow mentoring and many of them promote it.

Checking work is a task...mentoring is a process.

A comment for rkillian....
I disagree with the concept of paid overtime for engineers. We are a profession. If we promote concepts that are associated with non-professional pursuits, then we will continue to erode the status and stature of engineering as a profession. I know that some "engineers" have become unionized. Sorry, but I didn't put a lot of time and effort into an engineering education, internship,licensure, and professional practice where my livelihood is always on the line just to be lumped in with non-professionals who have little or no legal responsibility and public obligation. I'm not being arrogant...I'm just proud to be an engineer..I think it is honorable and the profession serves the public good.

 

[LPPE]

I don't see anything wrong with getting paid overtime. When I worked for a small company, you got paid for 8 hours a day, wether you worked 6 or 16. As you all know, it is never 6 hours. Often, I would work 10 to 11 hours a day, and there was no appreciation for working these extra hours. Where I work now, you get straight time for anything over 8 hours. I see it as a nice jesture that this company actually wants me to work for them and I respond by going that extra mile. Where I wasn't getting paid or felt appreciated for the extra effort, I would leave the office after 8 hours without any second thought. I say pay me for my time. I have a relatively importnat job compared to most and I should be paid well for doing it. Another discussion for another thread is wether or not a Masters Degree should be req'd.....

 

[engrx2]

Personally, either way doesn't matter too much in my opinion. I'm in a small firm now. Your boss and working conditions matter the most. Everybody is looking for something different than the next guy, so take whats in here and come up with your own opinion. I've been offered higher pay from other firms, and other positions as well, but I'm content where I am. I've known others that were the same until they got a new boss that they didn't get along with, so then they left the firm. My previous employer, large firm, mentioned that they had never laid off an engineer when they hired me. Engineers were too invaluable to be laid off. They gave me a sense of job security. Two years later, I was looking for a new job because management wanted to head in another direction and close some of its subsidaries. I was booked with work for two years, all of which had to be cancel with clients. To me, it's the job and environment that'll make you the happiest, but that doesn't hold true for all, so good luck.

 

[dozer]

Ron,

When's the last time you saw a doctor after hours and he didn't charge you because he's a professional? I'm sorry but I don't equate OT pay with blue collar. I've went throught similar things as engrx2 and if you really want to feel like your not being treated like a professional trying working for somebody for nothing.

 

[dougantholz]

There are a lot of things going on in this discussion, and it is really interesting.
First, a salaried engineer cannot get paid directly for overtime work. All salaried employees are call excempt, because they are excempt from the labor laws requiring overtime pay for extra hours work. It is in fact illegal for a salaried employee to recieve direct compensation for overtime pay. I know this because my firm just changed ownership and the new owner nixed the overtime pay as a part of bringing the company to complience with labor laws. An employer can pay you a pro-rated bonus proportional to the amount of overtime spent. This is legal.
Now, it is up the the employee, in this case the professional engineer, to get just compensation for the work that they do. If you work for a firm that pays you 10% higher in market value but expects 25% more work (50 hr weeks), it is up to the engineer to find another place to work if they don't like it.
I guess it comes down to, if you don't own the firm, then it is your responsibility to work appropriatly for the compensation you are paid. If the employer demands more work, and you feel that you are working adequatly for what you are paying, then you need to tell them you need more compensation for the extra time.
Now as to the size of the company vs. quality of experience. I work in a small branch office (30 engineers) of a larger firm (250 engineers world wide, 1200 employees). The firm is very progressive in searching out the best work. We have all different types of jobs from seismic retrofit, historic preservation, new steel frames, pt concrete structures, high-rise structures, stadiums. We are able to accomplish this because we simply have the most talent around. We have a large diversity of talents and it has been a very good place to work.
I hope you find a good, strong firm to work for. They will give you the best experience.
That's my 2 cents.

 

[DaveVikingPE]

As everyone has mentioned, there are good/bad sides to both. I think that if you want to be an engineer, you have to seek out those opportunities that will let you be an engineer. Just starting out of college, with zero experience, one finds out very quickley what one is worth: no P.E.? Ha! Minimum wage!, now check them calcs, boy! Or, you might spend most of your day on a construction site reporting concrete slumps, etc. (it's always good to have construction experience, though, no matter how little it pays). You've really got to know what you want to do with yourself. You also should remember that the smaller firms are, literally, the life's work of individual engineers. Many of them spent years of 18-hour days building up their business and they will not risk losing it, even if it means playing mean-spirited "jokes" on the employees, like no bonuses... As such, most of their 24-hour day/7-day week is spent on their firm; vacations for them are times to lose money... Caveat emptor!

That being said, your bills have to be paid, especially those pesky student loans. Sacrifices end up being made and dreams end up being put on hold for the proverbial "reality check." And gosh darn it, it's great to get the experience, but if Old Man Skinflint Ph.D., S.E., P.E., Etc. is paying you starvation wages you MUST leave when the better-paying job comes along. The cost is that the Old Man doesn't transfer his knowledge to you, but you can make that up with some extra study. In the mean time, there's bills to pay and a life to live. Maybe the better paying job is heavy on the "management" end of things and maybe there's too much office politics going on or maybe you're stuck doing PowerPoint presentations for big proposals, but the extra cash takes some of the sting out of watching the internet kids coin it in while you were stuck checking moment distribution calculations and remembering the joys of studying for final exams.

 

[ludvik]

The bizarre thing about overtime is that firms who pay it don't pay any less in base salary. The even odder thing about it is that when they do pay overtime, they are extremely hesitant about letting you do any of it.

Overtime is of massive benefit to any business which hires its employees out on an hourly basis. The normal multiplier between salary and charge rate is 3-4, so even though the firm has to shell out a bit extra overtime salary, they are still making out. Overheads do not double if I do double the numbers of hours. In fact, overheads - the larger part of an firm's balance sheet - stay almost exactly the same, whilst income doubles.

I don't think it unreasonable that employees share in this windfall. Think of it as a commision rather than overtime if you are interested in professional status.

Michael

 

[JSA]

Big firm when starting out: more experience to learn from. Small firm when confident in your ability.

 

[LPPE]

I agree with rkillian and DaveViking (Dave, you sound exactly like my college classmates!). If I put the time and effort in to become a professional, I should be paid like one.

However, I dont agree with JSA. I think just the opposite. Out of school, work for small firm. You'll get the personal tutorship, and learn alot more than you did in college. However, you won;t make a thing to pay off your student loans, and barely make enough to have sloppy joes on wednesdays. Once you learn actual engineering experience, go to the large firm and APPLY IT! When I was a senior in college, I couldn't wait to get out there and actually use the things I've learned. Almost the same thing with the small firm. I learned alot, but wasn't really allowed to apply it.

 

[haynewp]

Pylko, I think it depends. I have a situation more like JSA started to describe, and will actually be making a lot more for the smallest company I've worked for (4 people). I hope to have my own company one day and I think I am now familiar enough with engineering to start getting into the business side of things. Right out of college, I never would have considered anything besides the techincal aspects.