I have no idea who Zippia is, but according to them 1/3rd of software engineers in the US work at companies >10,000 people. And 2/3rds of software engineers work at companies still > 1,000 people.
So I'd argue, working at a small shop, while not rare, also isn't as predominant as you're portraying.
While I meant globally, and I’m not sure that these stats generalize beyond the US (but they very much might), I’m surprised! I had expected 2/3rd to work at companies under 1000 employees simply because there’s so extremely many of those and many of them need devs.
EDIT woa that page says there’s 320k software engineers in the US. That’s one entire percent of the population! That’s a lot, could that really be true?
So I'd argue, working at a small shop, while not rare, also isn't as predominant as you're portraying.
https://www.zippia.com/software-engineer-jobs/demographics/