For small businesses, pay is only part of the issue. Small business owners often get put on a pedestal in the States as the cornerstone of the economy, but they’re often petty tyrants who subject you to their whims for the most trivial things. At my previous corporate job, my process to take things of was:

• Check my PTO balance has enough to cover what I’m asking for.
• Put in a request in the system for the days off and wait for a decision on my request.

Once it was approved, it was locked in, and quite difficult for my bosses to wiggle out of if they realize they needed more people present than anticipated for the time I would be away.

In contrast, my current job at a small business:

• Tell the owner’s son (my direct superior) that I’m thinking about going somewhere in the future and wanted to make sure I could take the days off.
• Wait a bit, then get told it’s okay.
• Put my name on the shop calendar and indicate I will be away those days.
• Wait several months until the week prior to my departure.
• Owner will come by and say “Hey, I saw you have a week off. You really can’t work that week? I was thinking of going down the shore this week and getting away from the shop (which he’s done a few times already within the last couple of months), are you sure you can’t come in?”
• Spend the rest of the day annoyed until his son comes in and reminds him they already discussed it and gave me approval and I have now spent significant money on travel, accomodations, etc.
• The day before I leave, get another lecture from the owner about how "I’m not trying to keep you from going places, but you really need to give us a heads up first, rather than just booking stuff and telling us after the fact.’
• Spend the first day of my vacation pissed off because I already did exactly what I was told off for not doing.

It’s the same song and dance if I need a doctor’s appointment or anything. I’ve also only gotten a $3/hr raise over 2.5 years there, since “We’re a small business, we can’t afford to give raises,” while the owner has acquired several new vehicles, gone on international vacations, bought and sold a boat, and generally thrown his money around on everything and anything but retaining his employees.

Small businesses can be decent jobs when run by the right people, but they’re miserable when the thinks the universe revolves around them, and anyone else is a secondary consideration, at best. You also lose several workers protections if your small business employer is small enough to be exempt from meeting basic requirements, like my current job doesn’t even have 10 employees, counting the owner and his son, so now FMLA protections for us if we fall seriously ill.

Climbing the corporate ladder and grinding 24/7 is a fool’s errand, but I’ve certainly found more stability in a corporate environment than most small businesses I’ve worked for, with superior working conditions and pay, provided you’re happy with doing a less prominent role. LIke, nah, I definitely don’t want to be plant manager at my previous job, but I would go back in a minute if Document Control offered me a job in batch reviewing. Set schedule, decent pay, minimal OT, solid benefits, and nice, boring work of reviewing paperwork for mistakes certainly isn’t glamorous, but it’ll do you fine and I’d take it over a small business position any day of the week.