Is it better to be the big fish in small/medium sized organization and transferring over to a larger company once necessary experiences are obtained or a small fish in a large company and working your way up the ranks after college graduation?
You’ll learn more survival tricks as a small fish in a big, scary pond.
There are pros and cons to each situation. What are your priorities? Do you have an overwhelming student debt load that requires you to take the highest paying job you can find? Are you stuck with a small geographic location due to needing to live back home with your parents to reduce expenses?
What interests you in the job market? Do you have a passion that coincides with a particular company’s mission statement or purpose?
Are you getting some work/research experience before applying to grad school? If so, maybe you want the smaller pond so hopefully you can get more hands on experience and maybe garner more personal reference letters? Or maybe the larger pond offers tuition reimbursement?
It’s a quality of life issue once your physical and financial needs are taken care of. Sometimes it is okay to sacrifice a bit on the financial side if the promotion potential is stronger.
You do want to try to stick with your first job out of college for a couple of years, but after that it seems the current trends don’t penalize you for changing from one pond to the other. Best of luck to you!