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>Meanwhile, in the "enterprise" companies at which Valley >biens-pensants smirk and sneer, one finds often enough that >among the various fiefdoms, there's one

>Meanwhile, in the "enterprise" companies at which Valley >biens-pensants smirk and sneer, one finds often enough that >among the various fiefdoms, there's one or two with a savvy >director and a team full of smart, capable people who have >everything they need for the asking, and whose job is to >solve problems the organization would otherwise find >entirely intractable - sort of 18F or USDS, if you like, >except in an industry context and with less politics to >worry about, and as well or better paid. The trick is >knowing where to look and how to bring value. True. But please tell the second part to the story too. Those innovative teams, can discover cold-fusion, and they will be locked in and ignored- or even worser, there idea would be patented to be held hostage in lawyercabinetscryo until a advancing humanity is willing to pay the ransom. Those startups have only runway to loose and everything to gain- they will not throw away a discovery this way.

throwanem 10y ago
I do what I do because I like solving problems. I do it where I do it because I like to have a strong supply of new problems to solve, and because I want to be well and reliably paid for the value I add in so doing. Discovering and inventing new things hasn't really been a major part of that, because the problems I solve, the problems very large companies tend to have, rarely require it; the question is less one of coming up with novel tech and more one of applying tools and ideas that already exist in ways that are novel to the organization because the relevant knowledge and expertise is hard to come by without specializing in software as a career. If you want to discover new algorithms or invent the next React or C#, then working for a large corporation outside the tech industry may not be the best option for you. But there are many more kinds of problems to solve than those.

throwanem 10y ago

I do what I do because I like solving problems. I do it where I do it because I like to have a strong supply of new problems to solve, and because I want to be well and reliably paid for the value I add in so doing. Discovering and inventing new things hasn't really been a major part of that, because the problems I solve, the problems very large companies tend to have, rarely require it; the question is less one of coming up with novel tech and more one of applying tools and ideas that already exist in ways that are novel to the organization because the relevant knowledge and expertise is hard to come by without specializing in software as a career. If you want to discover new algorithms or invent the next React or C#, then working for a large corporation outside the tech industry may not be the best option for you. But there are many more kinds of problems to solve than those.