Thursday, September 21, 2006

Large company Smaller Profile vs Small company Larger Profile

A friend of mine , a freshly minted MBA ,mailed this to me last week, "What strikes me about #xyz inc# is that one can actually feel the size of the organization in everything that happens there. Security guards at every door, people don't take interest in others, crowd too large for that, long queues everywhere from cafeteria to SodexHo coupon counters. People work for a decade and are still new faces to so many in the organization...."
If you are about to finish your MBA and you are at that cross road ,called the placement season, you should ask yourself - "Large company Smaller Profile or Small company Larger Profile ?"

Off late, this one question worries me more than anything else
In fact, to the extent that i envy all those batchmates who are pretty clear (apparently! )
that they want to get into big companies - MNC or Indian or Hybrid(that would be CTS etc )
Ok, to simplify,let us consider the davids to goliaths of IT world alone
On one hand , we have the Wipros,IBMs and Cognizant's ...
and then the medium sized firms like ,say,Kanbay,Mindtree,Tech Mahindra etc
so whom do you pick ?
Am kind of at that cross road right now and the way i see it

Large company Smaller Profile gives you
Learrrning - mentors to learn from ,excellent past projects and experiences,functional experts - the real gurus of domains ...
Established process ( Assumption # 1 )
Brand name to sell to clients,potential employees (and potential employers ! )
What if its a large but a growing company - more clients and more projects and hopefully better profile 4 u
David and the Goliath - All the discussions on the imminent consolidation of Indian IT space and how a handful of big 4 to 5 may survive !
Lost in the crowd !
Job security - probably applies to some Indian companies

Small company Larger Profile gives you
No learning curve / Deep Sea diving from Day 1
Process - what's that ?
Lose out on Brand name ( generally yes )
Riches in Niches - there will always be niches for medium companies to grow
Career growth - the greatest attraction , do well and hope that the company also does well
Risk - Definitely on the higher side
Lesser job security
Visbility - You are not lost in the crowd
Visibility of success/failure is huge in a small firm
Risk premium - premium on pay for accepting the offer
The eternal question remains - small-big ? or big-small ? :(((

4 comments:

Lone Ranger said...

One would assume its easier to go like this

start with large c - small p and move to small c - significantly large p than start with small c - large p to large c - significant p .. finally it really is a personal thing and depends on the time you are prepared to invest.

In the industry these days nothing is impossible, really ..

SRK said...

my take - big company for autumns; finals ka baad mein sochenge :))

chutki said...

My take: Small company,big profile any day. Even if you tag on to a big brand, you won't go too far in selling yourself in another job interview if you haven't done something substantial in your 'big brand' job.

Nomad said...

hmmmm .........