I'd agree with a lot of what you said. The only thing I'd challenge is the implied notion that startups are inherently doing more cutting edge stuff than bigco'

I'd agree with a lot of what you said. The only thing I'd challenge is the implied notion that startups are inherently doing more cutting edge stuff than bigco's. Right now I'm doing a lot of consulting/contracting at startups. Most of the companies I see on my travels are not really doing anything that falls into the category bleeding-edge-and-could-fail. Most are pretty boring and derivative. Especially compared to some of the stuff I saw worked on at Facebook. I would argue that a lot of the cutting edge stuff that's being worked on these days is happening at bigco's (Google/Amazon/MSFT/Facebook). Now their are some big exceptions to this but in general that's what I'm seeing while traveling around SV. I would say that I prefer working with smaller companies for the sense of camaraderie and the relative lack of politics. That and the ability for my work to have a massive impact.