Greetings!
I work in a reasonably newer and smaller sized technology firm. When I started I was a bit sceptical as I saw people I knew mostly start with technology giants and conglomerates. Nevertheless, I kept a positive outlook and continued to experience everything. I have to say, it has turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened for me.
Here’s why I think it was vastly important for my growth and can be for yours as well :
- Correct Exposure: Anyone starting into the career path no matter which field/stream wants to have the right exposure. It’s just human nature. It was the same for me. Being in a small firm helped me get involved in a lot more work right from the start. I see some friends who started almost a year before me in bigger firms still barely able to get proper work as per their designations.
- The Necessity to Speak: I am an introvert by nature. I cannot speak for the other introverts but I can say that speaking up in front of a group of random people has not necessarily been a strength of mine. Well, here I did not have a choice. Since I was part of a smaller team, everyone needs to carry their own weight. It sounds scary to anyone with the same personality as me I know. But trust me, it has been so helpful to me. I can speak a lot more confidently in meetings with newer people and have started to actually look forward to more meetings where I have the chance to put forward my thoughts and ideas!
- No Bench Time: This has been another massive and integral bonus to my growth. Working in a smaller company means there is a lesser chance for you to be on the Bench. For anyone unfamiliar, being benched in a technology firm is when an employee does not have a project assigned and is waiting for one. Since my company has a good amount of projects under them and not a huge set of employees, everyone gets work to do. I had some friends be pretty happy and tell me that they are having the time of their lives being benched. Seriously? This is the time every new fresher should be grinding. The mere thought of being happy being benched sounds wrong to me at least.
- Multiple Job Roles: In big firms, say you are an employee with ‘X’ designation, you are usually assigned work that falls into the job descriptions of ‘X’ role. Well as you may have guessed, working in a smaller firm is a bit different. I have been working as a software developer, but since the start, I was introduced to many different technologies. With this exposure, it was helpful to me to know the different phases of a project. To understand deeply all the other aspects and thought processes behind a project instead of just writing code for a specific task that was assigned to me.
There are loads of other points that I could have added, but I did not want to drag out my article for so long. A note to everyone reading though. While this article does say that its beneficial to start from a smaller firm, does not imply that everyone working in bigger firms are unhappy and not satisfied. Bigger firms help you establish a sense of job security which is a pressing issue in these pandemic times. Smaller firms have their own perks and so do Bigger firms!
With this, I thank you for taking the time to read this article. If you like this one, check my other articles as well.
