Advantages of working in a small company

Jan 15, 2009 | |
To learn about projects, I firmly believe that working in a small company helps. You can always switch to the bigger one's after you have gained the right knowledge. Working in small companies comes with it's numerous added advantages.

Advantages of working in a small company are-
  • You get to see the entire project lifecycle upclose which is very important. Amidst few people, it's easier to learn (and grow).
  • You get to know every individuals work list  in the team and how it's handled.
  • You have (in most cases) direct access to the project manager- you volunteer to learn more
  • Easier access to information and knowledge from the team- you know everyone by their first names.
  • You are valued for your skill and chances are they're not a lot of people with the same skill set.
  • You have more creative freedom and you don't have to go through one layer after the other to get your ideas to work.
  • Greater exposure- to clients, to work- you name it!
  • Your have chances of your work getting noticed.
Most of it comes from my experince in working with a small company, while I would love to work for a Fortune 500 company , I think being here and doing what I do has  given me much more exposure that would have taken me perhaps years to get had I started with a bigger name. 

So, if you want to know more about Project Management and see it first hand before commiting and deciding to enroll in a degree/certification, getting into a small company might help.

Here are some other interesting articles that might get your attention- article 1 and article 2.

(Picture: Google Images)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For the most part I would agree with your list of advantages, but I believe that you have to define the size of the 'small company' at the same time. For some very small companies (2 to perhaps 20 individuals), getting the type of experience in project management as you describe it can be difficult.

Most of the work I've done in my career as a software developer has been with small shops, and I really enjoyed much of it. However, my experience in project management at larger firms has been rewarding and more challenging for the variety of work offered, the potential for mentoring from peers or senior PMs, or the need to coordinate larger and more distributed teams. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Anonymous said...

I'd say it's more about the company culture than about a place which can teach you more.

In small companies you can find yourself in a chaos which isn't controlled in any way and no one even tries to do something about that. On the other hand you can end up with small, flexible, well-organized startup where you learn a lot every day and you can grow with the company.

In big organizations you can land in a team leaded by asshole where everyone hates each other and no one would help a newbie in any single thing. However you can be assigned to a great team with a great manager and a couple of mentors who will teach you lots of their secrets.

I always look at the subject from the perspective of a team. A small company is one team altogether. In a big one there are many of them. If you join the great team - you're lucky, stick with it for some time. If you're out of luck and your team suck, try to change things around or leave.

Personally I prefer small companies ebcause I hate office politics and I love the fact it's much easier to change things in small organizations. However I can see advantages of working for a big organization where you don't have to count each penny, it's easier to hire great people and safety of work is significantly bigger.