My fundamental issue with this viewpoint is that it takes away the inherent entrepreneurship that exists in an employee/employer business relationship. Whether

My fundamental issue with this viewpoint is that it takes away the inherent entrepreneurship that exists in an employee/employer business relationship. Whether I'm on a team of 10 in an organization of a 100 or a team of 100 in an organization of 10,000, the reality is I still have much work to do to be valuable. I'd argue that if you are truly ambitious and hardworking, making your way up a corporate ladder can be just as challenging, risky and rewarding as being a startup founder. It requires time, dedication, sacrifice, risk-taking and developing skills that most people who chose programming as a career seem to forget about. People who program shouldn't box themselves into being code monkeys. I still need to pitch ideas at my corporate job to ensure they are valuable. I still need to use other people's code as any person building a shiny web app will do with open source projects and frameworks. I still need to manage finances, ask for raises, manage budgets. I still need to deal with HR, accounting, sales, product management, project management, marketing etc. At the end of the day a truly valuable "employee" is one who's really figured out the system and learned to sell themselves within it. As a startup founder you are still beholden to many people much in the same way as an employee who's working up the ranks. As a founder you will still deal with unproductive slow people. You will deal with aggressive investors, finicky customers etc. I think a corporate job is what you make of it. It's safer in some cases sure, although since we work in an at-will employment world, your never fully safe. But if you really want to grow, you need to take risks and try things and learn all the same skills an entrepreneur would need to.