It does suck to be attached to one's work when things go off the rails. The worst work life I have experienced has been when work sucked and every night I dreamed of work. It was like never having time off.

FWIW the worst firms have been small "we are all family firms."

It's OK to camplain.

FWIW the worst firms have been small "we are all family firms."
Second that. I will never again work for a company where the owner is the day-to-day boss, because they are way too invested in the business to make a fair boss.

Having worked for both family firms and huge international conglomerates, it's definitely nice to be anonymous. I think a family firm would be fine if the family running it had their heads screwed on right. When I did work for small family companies, they were either hobbies for rich people, lucky sperm club kids that got to run daddy's hobby business, or someone brilliant at what the business does, but not so good operating a business. At least with a huge conglomerate I can be anonymous, and the place will run just fine with or without me. There's always another cog to take my place. WOOOT

But really big firms can have "metrics" that are brutal and leave no room for down time or weakness. No room for a sick child, a cancer scare, or a mental health day.

There are big firms with some slack and some without.

I have found, however, that small firms have less place to hide. If you're not productive, you're out 'cause it's so plainly obvious. Where I work now, a huge monstrous company, there are so many meat puppets that you wonder what the fuck they do. They're an obvious drag on the company, but they continue to suck on. Good at politics, or armed with compromising photographs is all we can figure.

eek, I have two friends who work for a $15 billion a year firm. The only thing the firm looks at is contribution to the division's bottom line. Each quarter the bottom %10 gets fired and the top %10 gets bonuses about of about %200 of salary.

See the Jack Welch school.

Hint: never get attached to or passionate about anything run by a big, big company.

I knoooow, which so totally sucks because if everyone CARED about their job I think everyone would enjoy themselves so much more. But dangit those bigcorps® can really suck the fun out of anything.

I sympathize!

I'm moving from a school of 50 teachers to one of 10-12 because I couldn't handle all the politics and skullduggery going on in the background, and because my personal projects were getting shunted or back-burnered all the time.

Hint: never get attached to or passionate about anything run by a big, big company.

It's scary how much the mentality can stick, too. I used to work for a start-up that was specifically set up as an antidote to the unresponsiveness of the BigCorp from which our founders had fled -- only to have the start-up dig in its heels and respond to any request for change with "Well, we'll see...." on a good day and an immediate "Oh, that won't work" on a normal one. It was exceedingly frustrating to have to keep writing copy about how "innovative" and "responsive" and "21st-century" we were, and to hear about "open-door policies" and "non-hierarchical management," but to keep butting up against that "No change, EVER, and why didn't you go through the proper channels for this?" mentality.

The reasons I like working for a small firm are:
1. I'm called on to do a variety of things - not stuck doing the same thing everyday.
2. I'm terrible at politics.
3. I like being too busy. I've only had a couple of instances in my worklife where I had to pretend to be busy - it was horrible.
4. Flexibility - whenever I'd have to leave work for my hubby's illness, there was no question.
5. I know so much about how to make things work; it would be hard to replace me.
6. Slackers have a hard time hiding.

Reasons I don't like a small company:
1. Pay and benefits suck compared to larger places.
2. Nobody is there to cover for you on days off.
3. When you make a mistake, it can have a larger percentage impact on the whole.
4. When the economy pales, finances tighten quickly as there is less cushion.

Thanks all for the wonderful perspectives. There are definitely big company frustrations but you've reminded me the grass can be greener on either side.