Why working for a big corporate gives you the competitive edge.
Author: Heidi // Category: Stuff that wont fit into other categories
I am of the firm belief that everyone should start their career off working for a big company.
The benefits are just too amazing not to. Especially if said company is a bank.
Let’s use myself and my boyfriend, Shaun Custers as examples: I work for Standard Bank, he works for a small IT company. He earns more than I do, has shorter working hours and travels less every day but I still have the better deal. In the 2 short years I have been there, I have gone on over 6 training courses on things like web development, Usability, Web Project management, Marketing and the latest one, Leadership, all free. I have also gone to numerous conferences, also free. The interest rates on my house, car etc are all discounted. On the other hand, Shaun hasn’t been on one training course that he hasn’t had to pay for in full. And his company isn’t able to offer him interest rate discounts, a retirement fund, a free counselling service, free Will drafting, a free library, a subsidised canteen, etc (I could add quite a few more things that I am lucky enough to get.)
Now you see why I say all young people should at least start their careers at a corporate. Imagine you are a 21 year old, straight out of varsity, and you are able to get this phenomenal head start. You would be way ahead of your peers in a few years and if you don’t like the enterprise culture, then you can move to a smaller company or even start your own.
People like Tyler Reed are the exception to the rule, most young people need to claw their way up the ladder and spend their first few years in the working world slogging away for peanuts. Corporates don’t pay peanuts, and the training and bursaries they offer are enough to make it well worth ‘being a number’ for as long as you need to.
Think about it.
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Tags: corporate, perks, Shaun Custers, Standard Bank, Tyler Reed, work
November 16th, 2008 at 10:49
I don’t stand in great stead to argue my point here because I’ve never worked for a big corporate, so I’ll be devil’s advocate.
I’ve been very fortunate to work for a small growing company the last 2 years. At 23 I’ve been afforded the opportunity to manage 2 departments (Operations & Business Development) on separate occasions, reporting only to the M.D. Though I was probably not compensated to the level of work I was doing because of my age and lack of formal qualifications; the amount of exposure, responsibility and practical experience in a huge number of situations I’ve been afforded has been completely priceless.
At the end of the day I think it’s a very personality based thing – for me I have the drive to be entrepreneurial, take risks and do my own thing. I know a lot of friends who are quiet happy to keep their heads down from 9 to 5.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:59
There is more to it aside from the monetary perks in my opinion. A big corporate gives you a crash course in how business works, if you are a person straight out of school or university, a large corporate exposes you to many different sides of business (the good the bad the ugly..), in a very short space of time.
Any small company strives to grow and get the big companies as customers – if you don’t know inherently how big corporates function you will never be able to get that business (or if you do get it you may be in for a nasty suprise)
November 16th, 2008 at 11:00
P.S. @Nic …If you think corporate means 9 to 5 .. you are very mistaken
November 16th, 2008 at 11:12
Interesting argument -personally, with smaller companies, I believe that you are exposed to more aspects of the total business and forced to be responsible for activities that are not necessarily apart of your ‘job description’. This can be very good for personal growth and development.
With larger corporate work, you may have some fantastic perks and be sent on a greater amount of courses, but you don’t necessarily have as much insight into the inner-workings of your organisation.
I think that it’s important to have had exposure to both a large and small environment, especially for entrepreneurial types who plan to start their own company one day
November 17th, 2008 at 02:21
Wow! Thanks for the comments guys, some very interesting points have been raised.
Perhaps I should have included in my post the fact that I have worked for both small and large companies. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that corporates are very different to what they used to be. Great effort is made to teach staff all about the inner workings of the business and a ‘thats not my job’ attitude is no longer tolerated, especially if you are in a business unit that runs like a small business. (like mine)
As Rozz says, people with an entrepreneurial spririt would do well to learn how enterprises work so they can get their business one day. Having said that – Corporate is not for everyone. You have to be thick skinned and very adept at ‘the dance’ of business to survive.
That is precisely why it is a fantastic start in the working world. If you survive it – you can do anyhting!
November 17th, 2008 at 02:23
having never worked for a corporate sized company I can’t really comment but you make a few very good points there, some of which I hadn’t thought of.
Looking around in the job market at the moment for something new, maybe I won’t cancel out large corporations…
Thanks
November 17th, 2008 at 05:49
I’ve been working at a fairly “big” “corporate”, in that we recently scaled up and have had to adapt our internal processes to function more like a large corporate. It’s still a work in progress.
The thing with the benefits you listed is that, for some of us, they just don’t apply. I have the ability to take courses in programming, sponsored by my company, but I don’t think I ever will – I’m a self-learner. Discounts on house and car don’t apply, since I own neither. And given the way things are going, I’m quite happy with renting a place.
Big corporates are “safe” bets, in that they’ve been there a long time, and will probably be there a long time to come. But the landscape is changing, and the biggest of the big are starting to teeter, and being able to self-start in any given Internet economy is probably going to become an incredibly necessary aptitude within the next 10 years – something that a “cushioned” job just doesn’t prepare you for.
I’d rather spend five years with twenty different companies, learning to adapt and survive, than spend five years at a single corporate, learning their systems inside and out, and ultimately lose the ability to simply uproot and go elsewhere.
That, of course, is just me.
November 17th, 2008 at 05:56
I have worked for both a big corporate and a small company. What you must remember is that not all corporates develop their staff the way your bank has. For some companies, people are simply cost centres. Ever since Enron, the term CTC (cost to company) has been more common place and the concept of company loyalty has changed for people.
Some small companies provide growth as the company matures and may recognise that you have been with them from their start-up phase, offering stocks etcetera. You might be in a closer relationship with your boss. As an example, your boss might therefore be more inclined to help with a personal loan when you have a crisis.
So as everyone else has said, it’s more a personal choice as to where you work. I think people should take from this blog that there are places that encourage growth, both personal and business, and it’s up to you to make sure that you find the right balance.
November 17th, 2008 at 06:29
It almost entirely depends on the corporation, your personality type and the job type. I have worked for both a big corporation and a small company and generally prefer the small company environment (and now doing business on my own steam).
In my experience the small company offered much more flexibility, opportunity and encouraged stepping out of the “job description” whereas the corporate required only IT to handle anything IT-related, only technical could fix something that needed repair and colleagues felt very threatened when you stepped in to their “role”. You have a job description and you need to stay within its bounds – very much a union situation. Smaller companies try to get more done with less and so if you are hard working and good at what you do, word spreads quickly.
My personality type is one of “if it needs doing now I can’t wait on someone else to get things done”. Time wasting annoys me and that was my daily life with the corporate. Protocol really slowed everything down.
Granted the corporate offers some perks not available in smaller companies but generally I find the pros don’t always outweigh the cons when working for a corporate (again it really depends on the corporate and the job). But, the experience of working for a corporate has allowed me to build up a solid contact list that has stood me in good stead when starting my own company and I have learned to play “the game”.
November 17th, 2008 at 07:02
I started out at Dimension Data, a corporate and they moulded me and set a very high expectation of how a company should be run, and how the employees should be treated and how they should act – then again i was retrenched along with 400 other ppl.
I think it really is what suits the person: i flourish in big companies, but more of my friends would struggle, but the smaller company route suits them
Do what you love – then find some one to pay you for it.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:36
Fantastic food for thought – thanks a mil peeps! Especially StevenMcD who is a regular visitor!
November 17th, 2008 at 10:40
Thanks for a specific mention
much appreciate 
November 17th, 2008 at 11:33
All of you are right.
For some, a corporate is the answer, for others, the small enterprise.
The corporate where I was never offered any training that could qualify for SAQA accreditation. Luckily I had a local manager who paid for two courses that the company did not consider important. In the end I, and the powers that be could not see eye to eye. I am now doing what they did not want to hear about.
I would start at a small company and then move to a corporate. Why? Corporates tend to stifle entrepreneurial thinking. Small concerns tend to accommodate entrepreneurial thinking.
The other way round, most people never move because they get addicted to the “security”.
Heidi, the big gorilla in your industry is getting rid of 3000 people at the moment. Those who started there, or were there for long, are experiencing the most difficulty of adapting and selling themselves. They are all too used to working within very defined structures with prescribed rules.
Thanks to technology I can send the link of this post to my mailing list and let them experience your valuable insights.
Insights that I were not exposed to when I still worked for narrow thinking, corporate animals that blocked Facebook and had never heard of Twitter.
Thank you all for the value you add to many peoples lives.
November 18th, 2008 at 06:27
Hey Heidi,
Thanks for the mention, much appreciated. I enjoyed your post, because it is something I get asked often, why didn’t I get a job? Well I think it comes down to personal preferences, you know, who you are and where you want to be. I was extremely fortunate to have found my passion early on in life, as well as have the support of really amazing family, friends (both offline and online). It isn’t always easy, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
November 18th, 2008 at 07:02
@Tyler Reed Thank you so much for your comment! You are truly an inspiration for all young people.