Working With Small and Medium Enterprise

It's been few weeks of working as interns with a relatively small company based in Hyderabad,expertized in management consulting, business analytics, and outsourcing solutions. My keen interest in small and medium enterprises and philosophy of entrepreneurship in growing countries like India has allowed me to look closely and analyze the two sides of SMEs. Working with smaller companies has both positives as well as negatives

Positives:

• It's exciting
• You get to do a bit of anything / everything (if you want to, and sometimes if you don't)
• You'll usually find the management aren't rigid and jaded, and are willing and able to take on new ideas and new ways of doing things. This means you get to have a say (to some extent, depending on your position) on how things are done.
• You don't spend time working on horrible legacy code/model. You get to start from scratch, and (of course!) do it right...
• Rules are flexible, processes evolving. So you get to see how things are done even when its not fully organized.

The negatives:

• It's highly risky (check out how well funded the business is before you join)
• Lots of start-ups have a good technical idea but no idea how to market it. That's fatal and depressing for employees.
• Young techies running companies sometimes get it right, but just as often get it horribly wrong, so you may find yourself the victim of their inexperience / experimentation
• You don't get much respect from clients and partners (but on the other hand, you might actually get to interact with them on a meaningful level, if you want to)
• At times they lack in basic infrastructures at work place, that may well mean that you may not have air-conditioned, amiable work place. You may well be denied the very basic working conditions which will be expected of any established organization.

I'm sure there are hundreds of other positives and negatives in a relatively small sized organization like this. Problems and opportunities lives together conjointly. It's pretty common to see employees being unhappy in morning over some salary related issues and celebrating in the evening with a movie ticket organized by company. Life runs on and so does the organization. Wavy, as its journey's usually are, togetherness, management's personal touch and care lies somewhere in the core of the organization that in turn keeps employees bound and may be loyal. My overall summary is this: if you can afford to take the risk (or for some reason you believe it's a highly risk-free venture) and you enjoy the thrill of a roller-coaster ride, go for it. If you want stability instead, then go for a big, established company.