I've done this twice. Here are lessons from my experience:
* At a startup, I made decisions fast. At a large company I had to build consensus for everything. This meant a LOT of meetings to discuss the same thing over and over.
* At a startup, I interacted directly with customers. At a large company, there were layers of customer success, sales, that I had to coordinate with (pre/post meetings). It felt like more hassle than it was worth.
* At a startup, mission is clear, payday is company success. At a large company, lets face it, everyone's mission is to get promoted.
* At a startup, there were no restrictions on what we could try. At a large company, there is so many protocols, security, data handling, release notes.
* At a startup risk is rewarded. At a big company, everyone talks about taking risks but no one gets promoted for taking one and failing (at least in my experience).
* At a startup I hired and fired fast. At a big company, 90 days minimum to let a bad apple go. Everyone knows how to milk it.
All that said the corporate life was really good to me when I had young kids. Minimal work/stress, great benefits. Different priorities for different points in life.
