Is a start-up or an established firm the kind of place for you?

A few questions to consider:

Do you fantasize about stock options, or a parking spot with your name on it?

What would irk you more: Having to make a special trip to Staples when you need a manila folder, or having to sit through a three-hour meeting explaining changes to the expense report procedure?

Is the notion of a company gym appealing or repulsive to you?

I got an e-mail last spring from a friend whose husband was considering a move from the Burlington office of software giant Oracle Corp. to a small e-commerce start-up. Their big question was whether a job at the start-up, Lexington-based Gemvara Inc., would be too risky for their family.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about factors people weigh when they’re ready for a change or when they’ve been laid off. Will they be more fulfilled working at a big or small company? Is there inherently more risk in taking a job at a start-up than in toiling for a brand-name behemoth? And how do employers regard people making the move from one type of company to the other?

My friend’s husband, Devin Foulger, took the leap, joining Gemvara last April as a software engineer. (The company sells jewelry that can be customized through its website.) At Oracle, he says, “You always felt confident that there was the opportunity to move around if your project got canceled.’’

Plus, he says, the company had a gym, a cafeteria with “really cheap food,’’ and a discount on his monthly mobile phone bill.

Compared to Oracle’s $157 billion in stock market value, Gemvara has raised about $11 million in venture capital funding and employs 40 people. But Foulger says he wanted to experience building an e-commerce site, while stock options offered “a lot of upside potential’’ if Gemvara is acquired or goes public.

“For many people, start-ups are just a lot more fun,’’ says Clark Waterfall, managing director of the executive search firm BSG Team Ventures in Boston. “There’s a lot more doing things, and a lot fewer meetings to talk about doing things.’’

On the other hand, Waterfall says, bigger companies can dangle enticing cash bonuses equivalent to a year’s salary if not more.

Eric Crawley, a senior director of engineering at Akamai Technologies Inc. in Cambridge (2,200 employees), says that when working at smaller companies, “everything is your problem. If the printer or the fax isn’t working, that’s your problem to fix. It can be empowering in some ways, but it can also be distracting.’’

Crawley joined Akamai last month, and says he’s happily working on a small project team of 13 people that feels like “a start-up opportunity inside a big company.’’

Evan Grossman, a vice president at Watertown-based athenahealth Inc. (1,200 employees), points out that not all big companies are bureaucratic. Some large companies reward innovation and performance.

To get a sense whether they do, Grossman says, ask what the company doesn’t do well during an interview. “The most well-run large companies have a long list of things they’re constantly trying to improve, and are well aware of all their faults,’’ he says. “Poorly run large companies will rest on their laurels and tell you how good everything is.’’

Interestingly, both start-ups and larger companies can exhibit prejudice against a candidate that comes from the other side.

John Prendergast, founder of Blueleaf.com, a Cambridge investment planning site, says he interviews candidates from larger companies but hasn’t hired one yet. Employees from larger organizations, are “great at tweaking ideas,’’ Prendergast says, but have trouble being “fundamentally innovative’’ and adjusting to the fast pace of start-ups.

“It’s very hard to do without big company resources once you get used to them,’’ he says. Blueleaf has just seven full-time employees.

At Gemvara, chief executive Matt Lauzon says he has hired executives from big jewelry companies such as Tiffany & Co. But the right candidate with a big company background is a rarity.

“Our fundamental belief is that the way the jewelry business has been operating is broken, ’’ he says, “so you’re asking someone with lots of experience in that business to spend day after day questioning and abandoning the way they’ve always done it.’’

It can be just as difficult to make the jump from small to large, says recruiter Larry Kahn of New Dimensions in Technology Inc. “If you haven’t worked for a large company before, you can have a hard time convincing a hiring manager that you can be successful,’’ Kahn says. “They wonder how you’ll deal with more layers of decision-making.’’

Conventional wisdom used to say the larger the employer, the safer your job. That may no longer be true. Fidelity Investments, one of the bigger employers in Massachusetts, has shed about 4,000 jobs in the state since 2006, and more than 9,000 globally. State Street Corp. last month said it would cut a total of 1,400 workers, or 5 percent of its global workforce, through 2011.

“You used to go to a Fidelity or a State Street and assume you’d be very safe,’’ says Kahn, “but that’s not the case anymore.’’ In a smaller business, he added, the contributions individual employees make are often more visible, serving to protect their positions. (Of course, when a start-up runs out of money, that can result in a pretty brutal, 100 percent layoff.)

“The important question to ask is whether the company you’re with is adding value and satisfying a need in the marketplace,’’ says Eric Giler, chief executive of the Watertown start-up WiTricity Corp., which sells technology that can wirelessly transmit electricity. “Job security comes from that, not from a big corporation saying it will take care of you.’’

Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com.