Advice for my situation?

Hi,

I was wondering if, aside from the name brand and potential salary, there is anything "wrong" so to speak about working at a smaller firm vs a large, well known, multinational? Obviously, a larger company carries more prestige, better pay (at the same level, i.e. CEO of small/midcap will earn less than Paul Otellini), but having worked at large companies, I honestly hated the culture. I felt like another cog in the machine that wasn't doing anything significant and this really upset me. It was really hard for me to get through the work day and even get up to go to work knowing that I'd be sitting there, grinding away at an excel spreadsheet doing stuff a trained high schooler can do. Here's the problem: I'm young (junior in college) and I want to make career moves that open the door for me later on. By default, this means, since I'm interested in corporate finance, to apply to large multinationals such as GE, Intel, Boeing, etc. in their corporate finance departments, getting trained, and then either getting an MBA or kicking butt and climbing the ladder from there. However, I'm concerned that for one, I might not get the job since internships are extremely tough to get nowadays, and secondly, unless I can be at the top of a huge organization, I'm not sure I'd enjoy working there. I would much rather be a really high manager of a smaller company and leave a legacy in the company as being someone who either brought the company to a new level in terms of profitability or in terms of management than just be another controller or something relatively low level at a F500 and just be another corporate cog with a nice paycheck.

Therefore, my questions to you guys are whether its worth it for someone of my age to apply to smaller firms and if it would total career suicide to start my career there for whatever reason be it fit or if I don't event get into a F500?

Thanks