Big and small companies

After 2 months of interview sessions and travelling every 2^nd day between Bangalore – Mysore, I finally have two job offersJ. One of them is a small company and another is a MNC. I see a huge difference between the two companies starting from offer letter to procedures.

Big Company	Small Company
Slow in interview process and confirmation	Quick in interview process & confirmation
Big Salary	A bit less than the big salary!
An official offer letter in PDF format, salary breakdown, other legal bondings etc.	A general 4 line email saying they would offer xyz amount of salary.
Offers other benefits like medical insurance, travel allowance & facility	Nothing mentioned in the 4 line email!
The offer letter declares the date of joining	I was allowed to choose my join date J
Thorough pre-employment medical check up	Again, nothing mentioned
Require all kinds of documents & certificates from birth	Nothing mentioned!

But the major difference in the two companies would be the exposure and the learning opportunities and eventual career growth. From my past experience, I know working in a small company is always beneficial in the sense you get to learn a lot. There are opportunities in work and management, and we get exposure to leading teams & making decisions.

This will lack in big companies as there are enough people to do the jobs; if we don’t know a method or a technology someone else who knows it gets the chance to do the job thus missing the opportunity to learn it. And the recognition of work and credit is distributed in a big company whereas; small companies its more specific which adds as encouragement to work better.

I was in a big dilemma as to which one to choose. At this point of my life and career, there many dependencies I have to consider. Salary of course matters to an extent. Beyond that, living in a huge city like Bangalore, commute is major headache. So I had it into consideration from first, to apply to companies such that I can live close and not spend 4-5 hours in travelling each day. My approach for application of jobs was very straight forward. I knew which part of the city my husband would be transferred to. So I strictly applied to the companies in that area ONLY. This would help us to live & work in the same vicinity and save almost 4 hours each day.

I have yet to find a new place close to work, for now I manage from my uncle’s home in Bangalore. Thank god for that! J