TIPs ! Moving from massive company to small one

[pineapplepinecones]

Soooo I’ve worked in a 1000+ company for years, new job has 200 people.

any tips?

So far -

I am not going to gossip
keep my mouth shut till I work out who is friends with whom.

Anything else to think of?

What kind of tips do you want? What sector / role is it?

It'll be a huge change for you. Especially if where you are I'd bet corporate.

Don't discuss pay, with anyone, ever. Most corporate places I've worked we've been on pay spines so it's transparent what you earn. Small companies make it up and it can be contentious.

You might have to do a wider range of tasks and muck in more with different teams. Perhaps. Depends on structure and sector. Also be prepared if you show you know about or are good at something you could end up being volunteered to do it. Just my take anyway.

Definitely be ready to get your hands dirty. In small businesses, even senior staff have to do menial tasks.

Ah yes good points. In finance/ banking.

Be prepared to do everything.
Once known for something then going to attract more of that.
don’t talk pay ! I don’t anyway tbh.

Thought by small you meant five or six people like the one I work for.

200 still massive by my standards.

At least some of your new colleagues will likely ask you why you wanted to move to a small organisation, so you should have a credible answer ready (that doesn't make you sound like you think you're superior for working wherever you were before).

Those who don't ask you directly will be asking the others, so expect everybody to know what your answer was.

As long as you don't bang on endlessly about how "I'm ex-bigco" and "at bigco we wouldn't do that ourselves" and "at bigco we had solid gold coffee cups" etc, you'll be fine.

Just be respectful and learn the culture - without making people feel like you think you're above them because of where you worked before.

Good point @user1846385927482658
tho my last company had a well published end so that is taken care of BUT thank you for the reminder not to endlessly go ‘at XX we used to……’ as that is so annoying.

And 5 or 6 - golly. The thought of that makes me feel a little queasy.

Ah! Well that part will be easy then.

The physical environment and probably fewer formal processes will be the things you notice. Day to day it might not actually be that different.

200 people is still large enough that you won't necessarily get to know everyone. Especially if it's 200 people spread across 6 different offices or something.

Do you know if you are going to be working with 200 people or 20 people in your location?

The flip side to having to do more "menial" stuff yourself is that you will also have more freedom to do things your own way, and more scope to influence higher level decisions and get broader exposure. (Unless you were already c-suite level, in which case nevermind!)

It's been a few years ( pre covid) since I worked for a company about that size but the staff didn't think they worked at a small place, someone coming from a larger company wouldn't have been thought of as special or considered to have been taking a negative step

Obviously every workplace is different but it really would t have been a talking point at all where I worked