Confession: I'm a bit of an employment snob.
My career so far has seen me alternate evenly between working for big brands / household names versus smaller organisations.
I'll admit, that prestige, or instant recognisability, has been hard to leave behind. It's so easy to say, I work for X and have a stranger understand right away, rather than have to go into an explanation of the company. Giving that up was definitely a factor I considered.
This week I was part of a strategic planning session around sharpening our mission, if you like - in order to guide our work, and also (fringe benefit) enhance our employment brands (yeah, I hate myself a little bit for having just typed that sentence). I'm 150% behind what we do and am stoked to really see it gaining traction.