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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

Looking around in the job market at the moment for something new, maybe I won’t cancel out large corporations…

Thanks