oliviatamccue

Some movies describe life in small town as everyone knows everyone else; how gossip goes quicker than laser, the power of personal relationship and then come the plot.  My upbringing in city does not lend familiarity to life in small town.   In a city, it is more like people do not know their neighbor, or after saying “good morning” to each other, we are busy with our doings of the day.  After years, it is a comfortable habit in such detached interactions.

This small company gives me the experience of townsman.  At meal-time conversations, they talk about individual co-workers and their years of history in the company – a bit like reading the People magazine.  And when things happen, they cite examples of “similar things happening in the past” and could get emotional. Behavior is not sophisticated and people could have open disagreements, yet there is a fair amount of intimacy, a bit like relatives who argue one day and reconcile later.  The decision making process may not be scientific nor result oriented, rather people oriented.  For people around in the company for a while and have the knowledge in the products, they could be pretty safe in the position no matter how ill-fitted they maybe for the current assignment.

If working in large company is like living in a big international city like New York, Hong Kong or Tokyo, working in smaller company echo living in a town.  If folks in big companies talk about organizations, folks in smaller companies talk about people.  And if big companies make decision based on data and process and too much, smaller companies make subjective decision based on people they trust.  If big companies make each employee feel completely dispensable, does smaller company give employees more sense of importance?  If employees are used to constant reorganization in big companies, employees in this company still talks about re-organization of the company more than a year ago.

Such contrast creates the subtlety and the adjustment required to traverse from a large company to smaller company.

Posted in Career Management, Dear Diary