Comparing a large corporation to a startup and claiming they are more efficient and have more impact is dumb and is like comparing apples to oranges. If you look at the absolute value a corporation is creating, it'll always be bigger than a startup that is 1/1000 smaller.
However if you look at the value per employee in a large corporation, you'll always find out that the value per employee in a startup environment is much higher.
That is why people are drawn to startups because they can make a difference and not be a small cog in a big system. The question is not if the large corporation has a much bigger impact on the world but how big is your role in a company that has an impact on the world.
> A larger firm is more efficient (that's why almost everything is made by large firms) which makes employees of these firms more productive. This may be counterintuitive, but it's right
...I got a tad ragey. Everything is made by large firms because capitalism is predicated upon, well, capital, and the larger you are, the more you can grow. Mergers and acquisitions are the sound of that growth.
The next issue I have with that statement is this - define efficient.
The local branch of HP tenders for government websites, and then it charges the government $4000 to change text in a hyperlink. Is it more efficient at generating revenue than a small PHP firm? Yes. Is it helping the client make a more efficient use of their IT spend than a small PHP firm? Hell no.
Former employees of large dev shops who work with me tell me about the time they wasted in being forced to argue with clients about whether or not bugs were actually bugs, because bugs weren't billable but feature requests were. Apparently, this is more productive.
Having escaped from a public sector bureaucracy to a small start-up which is now at the 30-person size, claiming that a large private sector bureaucracy is more efficient and makes individuals within it more productive is most extraordinary.
Incidentally, the only real difference between a public sector bureaucracy and a private sector bureaucracy is that the latter gives its middle managers bigger bonuses.
However if you look at the value per employee in a large corporation, you'll always find out that the value per employee in a startup environment is much higher.
That is why people are drawn to startups because they can make a difference and not be a small cog in a big system. The question is not if the large corporation has a much bigger impact on the world but how big is your role in a company that has an impact on the world.