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> Implicit in my previous comment is that, because it's harder making things move in Big Corp one tends to learn more, both as an engineer and as a human. Findi

> Implicit in my previous comment is that, because it's harder making things move in Big Corp one tends to learn more, both as an engineer and as a human. Finding the right technical path through a heavily used, critical system is an interesting challenge, and evolving legacy systems, or spawning new work in a large org requires lots of communication, as well. Unfortunately the peril one often encounters in such ecosystems is that "the right technical path" for working with BigCo's system is totally un-translateable to general working knowledge. By that I mean it often means having to work around specific constraints that have evolved and are specific to that BigCo and not to other BigCo's, let alone to smaller startups. It also pushes you to generally work with technology which may be a bit older, which can often mean having to accept that current best practices simply aren't at play. I do agree with the second part of your thesis, which is that the social challenges of working in a big company are significant and can make one very well suited generally for management and leadership in a way that's not the case at a smaller company.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the peril one often encounters in such ecosystems is that "the right technical path" for working with BigCo's system is totally un-translateable to general working knowledge Having also seen many start-ups fail because they prioritized the right technical path over product-market fit, there's a balance that's generally unappreciated by both pure managerial and pure technical types.
groby_b 8y ago
What you learn is not the path, but how to find a path. And that - finding a path in an environment with lots of constraints - is an invaluable skill.
SZJX 8y ago
It could also pay off to be a specialist instead of a generalist though. Depends on what you want to do. Say if you become an expert in large scale distributed systems or some cutting edge AI techniques which require tons of data, which only big companies can afford to have, you'd still be very highly valued and probably better paid than the millions of generalists who can set up a normal software system. You'll become indispensable. On the other hand if you want to start a company yourself later, then being a specialist wouldn't help.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> the peril one often encounters in such ecosystems is that "the right technical path" for working with BigCo's system is totally un-translateable to general working knowledge Having also seen many start-ups fail because they prioritized the right technical path over product-market fit, there's a balance that's generally unappreciated by both pure managerial and pure technical types.

groby_b 8y ago

What you learn is not the path, but how to find a path. And that - finding a path in an environment with lots of constraints - is an invaluable skill.

SZJX 8y ago

It could also pay off to be a specialist instead of a generalist though. Depends on what you want to do. Say if you become an expert in large scale distributed systems or some cutting edge AI techniques which require tons of data, which only big companies can afford to have, you'd still be very highly valued and probably better paid than the millions of generalists who can set up a normal software system. You'll become indispensable. On the other hand if you want to start a company yourself later, then being a specialist wouldn't help.