Only: Small ones are even worse (see other comments). With big ones you have at least "something": Colleagues and "a lot of money blowing in at the front". HR is not your friend. OP makes a lot of mistakes. Life is hard. Big companies are a good / reasonable choice: The money. With smaller companies there is less money and more problems, usually, EXCEPT they are directly dealing with big corps (e.g.), which puts you back into big-corp-exposure. You have to go where the money is.
This has not been my personal experience at all. I've worked for huge companies and tiny ones, and the only real difference I've seen is that the working conditions tend to be far superior in the tiny ones.
Compensation between the two tends to be comparable as well (ignoring startups -- I'm not talking about them here, as they're a unique beast). I don't think that large companies have an edge on that score (actually, I think the opposite is true, but not by a enough to matter much). As an example, I left a megacorporation to work at my current job, a truly tiny company. My total compensation at my current job is about $5,000/yr less than at the megacorp -- not nearly enough of a difference to matter.
