Startup focus: Speed, pragmatism, wearing multiple hats. Less scale, more breadth.
Big Tech focus: Scale, specialization, rigorous process. More depth in specific areas.
Startup interviews: "How would you build this quickly?" Focus on MVP, iteration, technical debt trade-offs.
Big Tech interviews: "How would you build this at scale?" Focus on distributed systems, reliability, long-term architecture.
In startups, say "We could start simple and iterate." In Big Tech, say "Here's how this handles x growth."