> The author went from small companies to a big one. Has anyone gone the other way?

I have and the biggest difference is that the larger the company, the more the problem to solve is interpersonal and/or group politics and not technical issues.

Large companies typically take a Golden Handcuffs[0] approach to retain valuable employees. Usually, this makes people who have options to leave accept more organizational bovine excrement than if the financial carrot stick did not exist.

As to how to frame the "left mega-corp to effect change" argument needs to be framed... Well, that's about it. Every smaller team I have had the privilege to work with has understood why I did.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_handcuffs