The small company, while cool, has a lot of risks associated with it. Not least of which is that small companies tend to offer less security and coupled with the fact that you would have to move house, I would think long and hard about whether this all makes sense. If you did move and the Perl shop went down the pan in six months say, would it be easy to find alternative work in this new town/city? Or would you find yourself moving back to where you live now? Of course the bigger company will not be immune from 'downsizing' either. Has this happened at all recently? How do the two companies compare in terms of their financials?