I have been asked by many engineering professionals, especially engineering students and younger engineers, “Is it more beneficial to my career development to work in a small or large engineering company?” This is an excellent question, but unfortunately one that doesn’t have a straightforward answer because it really depends on so many different things. First and foremost it will depend on your career goals and which situation will put you in the best position to achieve them. It also depends specifically on which companies you are looking at as not every small or large company offers the same benefits or drawbacks.
That being said, in this post I will offer some advice from my own experience as well as some information I recently received from an executive at a large (the largest) engineering company.
I spent most of my career working at small to mid-sized engineering companies. When I graduated, I worked for a company that had about 5 employees total. This was a great experience because it allowed me to get involved with every aspect of a project including fieldwork, office work, and team/client coordination. I learned so much about the engineering industry in this position. One of the major drawbacks was that the benefits were not as good as those at a mid-size or larger firm. For example, there was no reimbursement available for graduate school or other courses that I wanted to take.
I also worked for a mid-sized engineering firm where I also felt I had the opportunity to get involved with most aspects of each project, although it did take a little longer for me to be able to communicate directly with the clients. I also found in a mid-sized engineering company the process for being promoted took a little longer because there was more of an official process to go through than at the smaller firm. The benefits were also much better than the smaller firm. In fact, the company I worked for covered about 80% of the cost of my master’s degree in civil engineering. They also covered the fees for my P.E. exam as well as the associated books and review course. Overall, working for a mid-sized firm was very beneficial to my career advancement and I would highly recommend exploring this option.
I have never had the opportunity to work for a large engineering firm, however at a recent engineering conference I attended a panel on career success and asked this very question to an executive from AECOM. AECOM is the largest engineering company in the world with approximately 50,000 employees! This executive went through this process of deciding on working for AECOM or taking a position with a smaller company. Many people claim that when you work at a bigger company, there is a greater chance that you get pigeonholed into working on one specific task for large periods of time. While this may be true and this executive said that he feared this, his experience at AECOM has been anything but this. In fact, he said his experience with a larger company has given him the ability to work on larger and more interesting projects than he may have been able to work on at a smaller firm. I had never thought about it from this perspective. Large companies usually get to work on very high-profile, larger, and complex projects which could give you invaluable experience and enjoyment in your career. They also most likely will have a great benefit package and potential for graduate school reimbursement. This executive also warned us that his experience may not be standard for all large companies and it’s important to really explore the company, the people that work there and the projects they work on before making your decision. One other benefit of large companies is the potential opportunity for travel and/or relocation to one of their other offices either within your country or abroad.
I hope you found this post to be helpful in your engineer career advancement and I would ask those of you who have had to make this decision to please share your thought process, decision and results.
Also, feel free to listen to any of my past radio shows for advice from experts on engineering career topics similar to these.
We would love to hear any questions you might have or stories you might share on developing your engineering career.
Please leave your comments, feedback or questions in the section below.
[widgets_on_pages id=”TECC Free Resources”]To your success,
Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success
Great post Anthony.
A big consideration for me in my career is the geographical location of the big companies vs. the small companies. Most big companies are located in large cities, and if you like the small towns like I do, a large company may not be for you.
Thanks for feedback David. I would agree with you for the most part, however I have seen very large companies have very small offices (branch offices) in small towns. So I do think you can get the large company feel in a small town, but not all that often.
Excellent information. I have worked for companies with as few as 14 employees to ones with over 10,000 employees. Obviously, each position was different in many ways and each offered significant opportunity – just not always for me.
It is very difficult to learn or know for sure what a given employment experience will bring you based on published company information or what others say about it. What I recall from when I started my career, the best sources for jobs and information were professors, newspapers, and professional societies. So, you broadcast your resume to every company who you think might do what you want to do or what you are qualified to do and hope for the best. Coupled with this situation was the “resume appearance” advice that once employed you assess the situation and you either get out within six months if it is wrong for you, or, you stay at least 2 years to get as much as you can from the opportunity and see where it goes. I took this advise and my resume reflects one wrong position that I held for a couple months, a few good positions I held for 2 to 5 years, and one that I had for 10 years. The 2-month opportunity was largely affected by the closing of the satellite office were I worked and the next nearest office being a 1.5+ hour commute from home. The 10-year position was enriched by the current company being acquired by a larger company, not once, but, twice – company went from a couple hundred employees to a couple thousand employees, then to 10s of thousands employees – each change created new challenges and opportunities, both personal and professional.
The down-side result of this 6-month/2-year concept is a long resume with lots of explaining to do during interviews. However, the up-side is significant job flexibility and exposure to numerous talented people that I continue to learn from.
From a career perspective, as with most things in life, each opportunity is what you make of it. So every position, no matter what the size of the firm you work for, offers opportunity – it is just a matter of paying attention, refining or re-setting goals, continuing to keep an eye on the field, and knowing when moving on is right for you. The value of each opportunity is also affected by your personal situation – family, geographical preferences, other interests, etc. – which changes over time.
Bottom line – your career will be influenced more by the people around you than the number of employees in the company phone list. Best thing to do is learn what mentoring is and find good mentors in a few different places of your life.
William thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience as I think the information that you have given in your comment is invaluable for multiple reasons, but one being because that is your real life experience. The one point you made that I want to restate which is SO TRUE is: each opportunity is what you make of it! I like to tell engineers all the time that true leaders and successful professionals turn “problems” into opportunities. Thanks William!
I received the following comment on this post from Robin Johnson through a LinkedIn discussion and wanted to share it here because I thought it would be helpful:
Hi Anthony,
I suspect this depends a lot on which discipline of engineering you are in as well as many of the other criteria already listed. From a personal point of view I have been involved in the enabling side of electronics and communication and to a large extent new product introduction. I would suggest that a larger company early on – espcially if it has a good induction allowing you to spend a short time in various departments is ideal for many people looking to find their feet in engineering. This can be very important if experience up to that point hads been quite narrow. After that I think it’s a question of whether one wants to be a big fish in a small pond, or a smaller fish in a bigger pond.
I have enjoyed working within smaller companies (<M$50) as I have found it easier to get involved in all elements of the business – however it is horses for courses, and perhaps I am influenced due to:-
1. advancing years – not willing to give up yet but probably more behind than in front.
2. initial training in science and converting to a more engineering bias.
3. got in with a good medium sized company relatively early on (4 years in to my career) and they helped me experience everyting ranging from R&D through sales to plant management an dultimately President of an engineering company.
Engineering can be fun, rewarding and challenging working in any size business and I suspect if you sieze every opportunity, and burn the night oil keeping skills up to date then your carreer will advance.
Anthony, thanks for posting this. I have been asked this question a few times as well, and, having worked at a few small firms and a few medium-sized firms over the last twelve years, I agree with everything that has been said so far. Every company is different. One thing I would like to add, though I’ll preface it with “It’s not fair or accurate to generalize,” is that larger companies tend to have a larger variety of projects than smaller companies. So, while a smaller company may offer young engineers a chance to work on the different facets of a project: fieldwork, inspections, drafting, research, calculations, meetings; the projects tend to be similar in nature. A larger company may be offer a chance to work on different types of projects, while (generally) performing similar tasks. Both offer unique experiences and opportunities, so there’s no right answer – or, more appropriately, there’s no wrong answer!
Thanks John – that’s a great point that I bet many people don’t consider. Thanks for sharing your experience and I hope all is well!
I disagree with a lot of what the poster says. I’m just chiming in to say that the fact that this poster thinks that AECOM is the largest engineering firm in the world. I’ve worked at two of the top defense contractors in the USA, numbering well over 100,000 employees each, and recently a small company with 8 engineers. Given the fact that the original poster doesn’t know how big these companies get, all should take what is said, although valuable in some cases, subtly.
Hi Biphycor sorry for the inaccuracy, that was a statement made at the panel which I should have checked on before posting. Could you give us some of the things you liked/disliked about big/small companies? Thanks.