This is a tough question. Speaking from experience with both, I am still unsure of the answer.

A small Mom & Pop does have it'* benefits. When I was with one (8 yrs) there was a very nice hometown touch and it was very easy to provide excellent customer service. But there are issues: 1)could be a "dead end" job, 2)may have limited benefits, 3)smaller pay scale, etc.

I moved from there to a larger mid-sized company, better benefits, slightly better pay, but the trade off was it became a little harder to provide customer service due to office politics. There was also an extreme amount of backstabbing in order to climb the "limited" corporate ladder.

Currently with a major corporation. benefits are awesome, pay is good. Customer service is extremely difficult since it is very hard to turn such a large ship. But the most frightening part is a little something called reorg. Seems like we have went through a reorganization 3 times in the last 3 yrs. It gets pretty hairy when you are sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. That call will tell you whether or not you are employed for the next 6 mos ot not.

My personal philosphy is that small business ownership is the ticket. I have worked for almost 20 yrs for someone else, gaining tons of experience. The plan is to put it to use for myself at some point in the not too distant for myself and hopefully employing other people. I guess it really comes down to what you want and what you want to accomplish.