>These fat-cat, lazy ass, companies just get to skate by on pure inertia. How long before young and sexy startup becomes lazy fat cat nowadays? Maybe ten years

>These fat-cat, lazy ass, companies just get to skate by on pure inertia. How long before young and sexy startup becomes lazy fat cat nowadays? Maybe ten years? So, now the older crowd needs to constantly re-do everything because the younger guys got lazy? I'm not sure what the solution you're advocating here is. Eventually, everyone becomes a fat cat it seems, at least to the eyes of the new guy. I suspect the $bad_vendor or $bad_project isn't that bad and the time/work commitment to constantly re-do it is non-trivial. Especially if by the time you finish this big rewrite its already obsolete or unlikeable in some way -- not HTML5 or not whatever is hot right now. I think part of maturing is knowing how to recognize the grind and when to actually disrupt it in some way. Is $boring_logistics app really the problem that needs to be solved at $big_co? Arguably, the execs have better things to do and that judgement is what we're paying them for. When it becomes a problem they should know and address it, but to a young guy spoiled by ultra-shiny ipad apps, well, that logistics interface looks "old and boring" but its actually doing the job well. > but he's just too comfortable. Perhaps this is besides the point, but maybe there's a shelf-life on human 'can do' attitudes? Ten years ago I'd do anything that piqued my interest, obsess over it, and now its a lot more difficult to get excited and motivated especially if you have been in the grind long enough. At a certain point you realize this is all folly. Another product, another roll out, another set of unhappy/happy customers, another sales projection, another competitor to worry about, another thing that will obsolete in a week, etc. From a psychological perspective, we don't often talk about what it means to have a lifetime of work under your belt. How does it affect us? Is it reasonable to spend ages 22-65 working in the same industry/focus? Imagine if we put monkeys in a cube and forced them to do the same-ish things for decades. We would probably be arrested for animal abuse. But its okay to do to people apparently. Maybe have some sympathy for the codgers, they're as much victims of this weird world we call work as anyone.