My first computer related job (early 90's) was at a small company (maybe 40 people in the office) and I really liked it. This was long before I was anything close to a real sysadmin, but I was basically the only "computer guy" (not really even IT, hell "IT" wasn't a term yet IIRC). I'd lean to the culture being the more imprtant factor then size.
The pluses a smaller place can have if it has the right culture and atmosphere is that you're more like a family and much better communication around the place.
Unfortunately, the place I worked at had really hard times after I was there for about 6 months and a chunk of us were let go.
Now I work in a huge company, but we still have a good culture (in general). I've been here for more then a decade and while there have been times where I was frustrated about stuff, I've been happy overall. Compensation and benefits have been great, and I've worked hard to get my base salary and such up there.
I did go through a long period (first 7-8 years) busting my ass, working WAY more time then I really needed to, but finally realized that it was too much to take anymore and have learned to put things down and get back to them later. I give myself more personal time, work from home more to break up stressful times, etc. I've earned the respect and trust of my peers and bosses in order to be able to do this.
Back to the main article's point.. I looked at TFA and even the PDF (holy crap did it look like crap in acroread on this linux box) and see no details at all. Without them, I can only assume this is mostly just people whining about stress (vs doing something about it) and about how IT can be in general. If they don't like it, they should get out now. As for real physical abuse.. that's illegal anyway, report it.