I have to say I'm a bit surprised by the sentiment favoring working at big companies among the majority of comments here.

One possible explanation: 1) Statistically, most engineers work for big companies. 2) By human nature, people tend to stick to their current jobs, most likely a big company job.

Here is a related thread at Quora: http://www.quora.com/If-I-want-to-be-an-entrepreneur-later-s...