Ask HN: Startups like “marines” vs. big companies like “infantry?”

[cdennison]

I’ve been struggling with the transition from a startup to a big company and I think this is why: At the startup I felt like I was a marine being sent in to fix an extremely important, immediate problem - if I didn’t kill the bad guy today than people would start to die.

At the big company I feel like one soldier marching alongside five thousand others. We are marching for months on end in order to position ourselves for a battle that we’re being told will occur sometime in the distant future but might not happen (the enemy might change their mind, a new enemy might arise somewhere else, etc.).

Has anyone else struggled with feeling like every day they’re simply “positioning” vs. solving immediate problems?