I've never worked at an MNC, what would you say are the merits and demerits of working at one?

When it rains, it pours, In both pros as well as cons. That’s a simple summary of a MNC life.

You can either be working for an MNC and still be a part of terrible work culture (and measly compensation) with no real merit so to speak, and you can be working in a local firm and still be very happy with culture and compensation. There's no general list of merits and demerits, everything depends on company on an individual level. Also, Infosys is technically an MNC and I'm yet to find a person who's happy with everything Infy has to offer. 😂

If the MNC is big enough, individual teams will have wildly different cultures, compensations, etc. So it's almost impossible to know how good/bad it will be unless you have someone working in the team you're planning to join. Growth will also be more limited in large orgs.

If you want to become a specialist in your domain, then MNCs are the right place to work for. For instance, if you want to become a specialist in "core" data science, and not worry about anything else like DevOps, then you will get ample opportunities in a MNC because MNC's mostly have separate teams (sometimes departments) that handle different aspects of the projects altogether. This allows you to focus on the things that you love to work on without worrying about the extra-curricular stuff. (This is not to say that you cannot work on other things.) You wont have to worry about your work-life balance. I agree that this might depend on the team that you are joining, but those teams are outliers (and are rare). Time Tracking - I will not generalize this, but in my experience whether you work for 9 hrs or 4 hrs a day, isn't tracked and you get the flexibility to decide when is it (i.e., timings) you want to work. Leaves - ample amount of paid leaves are given to further support your work-life balance. For instance, in my current org, I have ~2 months of paid leaves (including different kind of common leaves) + ~10 additional types of leave. Growth - this might be a limiting factor and will depend on the type of MNC that you work for. For example, in some cases, you are promoted after few years, while in some your promotions depend entirely on your visibility.

Lots of MNCs have time tracking, restricted leaves. You might be conflating product company with a MNC @quick-judge-84214. Plenty of service based companies that are MNCs and have things like time tracking, leave approvals etc

As I mentiond, @modern-table-48211

Time Tracking - I will not generalize this, but in my experience whether you work for 9 hrs or 4 hrs a day, isn't tracked and you get the flexibility to decide when is it (i.e., timings) you want to work.

My current org is an example of this. No approvals required to take leaves, and no tracking, among other things. Whereas, a friend of friend of mine was previously working for Tech Mahindra, and they had the whole shenanigan of tracking (if I recall correctly, they tracked you using your desktop camera). Plus wife of a friend of mine is working for a Germany based company (a startup), and they track your keyboard strokes for tracking purposes.

My bad, I seem to have missed the “I will not generalize” part

If you want to become a specialist in your domain, then MNCs are the right place to work for.

No. Not all MNCs and not all teams in MNCs are conducive for depth of knowledge. Many teams/roles in MNCs require breadth and superficial knowledge necessary to productise something. Just think of any MNC as 20 -2000 startups forced to work with each other.

what would you say are the merits and demerits of working at one?

Depends on which startup team/org you join in an MNC.

@chilly-rocket-77832 My question wasn’t specific based on country/headcount I just wanted to understand the differences compared to a start up.

Are you considering interviewing at or joining one, and hence the interest?

I was just contemplating if it would be worth joining MNC at some point in the future. I would like to take this moment to thank everyone 🙏 in this thread, I’ll consider all these points while taking decisions!

No. Not all MNCs and not all teams in MNCs are conducive for depth of knowledge. Many teams/roles in MNCs require breadth and superficial knowledge necessary to productise something.

I agree, but the depth and breath of knowledge is mostly required for an experienced profile. If you are going in as a fresher or (sometimes) on an associate level (<5 yrs of exp), then you are less expected to have the breath but expected to have the depth. Atleast that has been my experience (~3.5 yrs) of working in MNCs (10K employees and 100K employees).

IMHO, drop the label, and just evaluate the company you are going to work with. Just like in relationships (I go to this metaphor too often for my own good!); choose your partner not the stereotype. I am not saying that work is life, but if you treat your workplace like you treat a life-partner, you will seek (and find 🤞🏾) joy instead of "compensation".