I started out in a medium company not really doing anything exciting, but doing it fast (and in .NET... bleh!). I decided to go the startup route and tried that

I started out in a medium company not really doing anything exciting, but doing it fast (and in .NET... bleh!). I decided to go the startup route and tried that and failed twice over the next two years. At some point I got fed up with job hunting and decided to move into a bigger company. It did wonders for me. Not only did I learn all the things I couldn't with startups (managing 200+ webservers, 75 DBs, tables with over 100 million rows etc...) but I was able to fine tune exactly what I DO want in a career. Every opportunity offers something unique so its just a matter of extracting the things that benefit you until the point at which it becomes boring or you stagnate. Then move on :)