Same title. Totally different job.

A network tech at a 50-person company and a network tech at a Fortune 500 can do completely different work for completely different money. The variable most people ignore: company size.

Why it matters: Where you start shapes how fast you learn, what you get exposed to, and how high your ceiling goes. Pick wrong for your stage and you either stall out or get thrown in over your head.

In this episode:

🔹 Small — You touch everything: networking, servers, printers, phones, someone's Outlook. You learn fast and broad. But there's no one senior to correct you, no escalation path, and bad habits go unchecked for years. You learn how to make things work, not how things are supposed to be built.

🔹 Midsize — Real teams, real structure, a real ladder. Someone above you who's already done what you're trying to do. The trade: on-call rotations that come back around fast, and duties that keep piling on as the company grows.

🔹 Large — The biggest pay jump you'll see. Stock, bonuses, cert budgets, six-figure conversations. Also: layoffs, silos, and a pace that doesn't let up. This is the jump from college to the NBA — everybody in the building is good.

My take: Midsize is the sweet spot. Enough structure and pay without the silos and the grind.

👇 Which one do you work for — or which would you prefer to work for? Drop it in the comments.

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