Sometimes it is. In my experience I was expected to do less at a start-up but to do it well. Yes, I worked across the stack and often would find myself doing varied things but instead of stacking more on in a day, it was more like quickly shifting priorities each day.

Now at a larger company I’m expected to spin many plates so to speak. I’m measured on my ability to write code, pitch projects, design architecture, manage cross functional relationships, interview many candidates a week, have company outreach of some form, mentor junior members, deal with organizational politics (this is the big draining one), participate in project reviews, run projects for new employees to work on, provide feedback to all my peers, tons of personal development planning and self-reviews, manage third-party relationships, respond to incidents and be on-call for things not related to my team, learn new things every year aka personal development, and more.

And if I fail in one of the four areas in a performance review I can be put on a performance review plan. I’m making it sound more grim than it is, but for my experience there are just more things to do and there are no compromising them.

Maybe other individuals are better at this or work with a manager that has less expectations, but this is my experience. I think I was a better programmer at the startup, but I have more organizational impact at the bigger company.