It's a subjective question so don't feel bad about projecting. I was coming from the diametrically opposed position where I have a very specific interest and ba

It's a subjective question so don't feel bad about projecting. I was coming from the diametrically opposed position where I have a very specific interest and background (robotics) so I couldn't go write web-apps even if the business side ("the next big thing") was extremely compelling. I was mostly trying to understand how (and if) YC's alpha engineers would happily go work on "the next big thing", largely independent of what that thing was.