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First job out of college? Prefer a small company

marting

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marting
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Sep 18, 2003
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Please consider small companies for a first job out of school. And the education you get at your first job is more important than the time you spend in college. Here's why I was fortunate to wind up in a small company.

I was burning the summer break away in the dorm and the school, knowing I wasn't heading off to grad school, would send be notes about companies looking for new hires. I kept tossing them until I was running out of bean and hamburger money. Then decided to look into one. It was a small business 5 miles away so within my scooter range. Interviewed and got hired somewhat to my surprise.

Turned out it was a small tech manufacturing company. And their needs were a perfect match with my engineering interests.

In a small company you quickly learn how your work impacts most every part of the business. From helping those on the factory floor to customer service, sales, and synergy with other projects. There is no way I would have had that exposure in a large company.

Initially, I was a junior engineer charged with cleaning up existing designs. Sometimes I was sent on tech calls when customers were having product issues. Invaluable experience that got me promoted and translated into design improvements that made it easier for the quality dept. to test/verify, clearer manufacturing processes, and simpler customer usage.
 
For a real education, start a small company.

But it might be a good idea to hold off on that until you've paid off your student loans.
 
marting said:
Please consider small companies for a first job out of school. And the education you get at your first job is more important than the time you spend in college. Here's why I was fortunate to wind up in a small company.

I was burning the summer break away in the dorm and the school, knowing I wasn't heading off to grad school, would send be notes about companies looking for new hires. I kept tossing them until I was running out of bean and hamburger money. Then decided to look into one. It was a small business 5 miles away so within my scooter range. Interviewed and got hired somewhat to my surprise.

Turned out it was a small tech manufacturing company. And their needs were a perfect match with my engineering interests.

In a small company you quickly learn how your work impacts most every part of the business. From helping those on the factory floor to customer service, sales, and synergy with other projects. There is no way I would have had that exposure in a large company.

Initially, I was a junior engineer charged with cleaning up existing designs. Sometimes I was sent on tech calls when customers were having product issues. Invaluable experience that got me promoted and translated into design improvements that made it easier for the quality dept. to test/verify, clearer manufacturing processes, and simpler customer usage.
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There are good reasons to go with either a big or small company as a first job. At a big firm you will learn the ropes of the business and have a lot of support from the organization. If/When you go to a small firm make certain you have a mentor and are not left completely on your own to sink (or swim).
 
I doubt too many people here are fresh out of college but I think it depends on the particular company. Big or small, some are good places to work, and others less so. I've been working at a particular Japanese company for the last 23 years or so. I wouldn't call it a big company, or a small one. Since I've been working it has probably grown from about 100 to 200 employees. Medium-sized is probably the best way to describe it. Family-owned mostly. The founder is still the president.
 
Puppycow said:
I doubt too many people here are fresh out of college but I think it depends on the particular company. Big or small, some are good places to work, and others less so. I've been working at a particular Japanese company for the last 23 years or so. I wouldn't call it a big company, or a small one. Since I've been working it has probably grown from about 100 to 200 employees. Medium-sized is probably the best way to describe it. Family-owned mostly. The founder is still the president.
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I'd actually call that a small company.
 
I guess I lucked out. After majoring in Criminal Justice for a couple of years, with no solid plan, I met an attorney. We hit it off and he asked me to locate a witness and interview them in a criminal trial. It went well.

He referred me to a well-known San Fran PI, Richard Bowen, who hired me.

I dropped out of college. It is what worked for me.
 
A big company can be best if you don't really know what you want to do. I would never have chosen my career as a teenager or even fresh out of college, because I had never really encountered finance other than opening a checking account. As it happened the company I applied to included a little math test and I scored strong enough that they decided that was where they could use me. Five years later I was arranging loans on 20-story office buildings (not that I was getting paid like that sounds).
 
W.D.Clinger said:
For a real education, start a small company.

But it might be a good idea to hold off on that until you've paid off your student loans.
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One of those HGTV house fixing hosts actually used his student loan to buy a multifamily and used it as a project for business school.
 
I went to work for a big, greedy company as a clerk and was happy about that. Partly because I knew I'd do OK once I got my foot in the door. Partly because I figured they must know how to stay in business.

Well, they're still in business but just barely. The stock became nearly worthless. The Internet pretty much killed them. Which was weird, because way back in the '80s they were working on a prototype for profitable online news delivery - and then dropped it for no apparent reason.

In some ways the company functioned as a small business. At my property there were fewer than 100 employees when I started, which was down to about 65 when we closed down. It was pretty much a meritocracy, which might be part of what the OP is getting at.
 
I'm in my last semester of my geography bachelor degree and I was advised pretty much this. Go for a small municipality. You'll get to work more closely with projects and follow them from beginning to end, instead of only being a tiny cog in a big machine in some larger company or municipal administration.
 
It depends upon how high up you are in the authority chain. You're much more likely to be ◊◊◊◊ on at the bottom in a large company. They can be brutal... especially to young people. It's like they think you're their wayward red-headed stepchild. I suppose it may not be everywhere, but that's my experience.
 
Puppycow said:
I doubt too many people here are fresh out of college but I think it depends on the particular company. Big or small, some are good places to work, and others less so.
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Exactly...neither is inherently better or worse. I'd take the first job offer I got. You can always look further if it doesn't seem to be a fit.

Frankly the last thing I'd do it start up a business, even if I didn't have student loans to pay off. Countless headaches, very long hours, and all for a company which odds are won't last long term.
 
The title of this thread made me think of an example from the other end of the hierarchy of professions: restaurant waiters.
In the late 1980s, I was a teacher at the Hotel and Restaurant School of Copenhagen. One of the assignments of waiter apprentices was to give a 5-minute presentation in English of what it was like to be a waiter apprentice at the hotel or restaurant where they were in training. There was a significant difference between the stories told by the apprentices working at big hotels in Copenhagen and the ones told by apprentices working at restaurants in provincial towns.

The working day of the latter was full of what Marx described as the "pores of the working day."
'We start with preparing .... then we sit down for a cup of coffee. And the we ... and then we have a cup of coffee.' Then there would be the rush for a few hours, and when it ended, they would sit down for a cup of coffee before they cleared the tables, and got a few things ready for the next day before they went home.

Things were different at big hotels in Copenhagen. For instance, one apprentice, who was otherwise very conservative and always carried an attache briefcase (very unusual), started his presentation with the words: "The most important thing of all is to learn to look busy."
Whenever waiter apprentices were seen apparently doing nothing, a supervisor would immediately find a job for them to do. What Marx would call "filling out the pores of the working day." So even when they were on their way to the bathroom, they would be carrying a serving tray or a stack of plates to make it seem as if they were busy working.

No room for breaks!
 
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