I prefer startups too, but I disagree on a couple of points: 1. There are lots of politics at small companies too. There are lots of politics in any social con

I prefer startups too, but I disagree on a couple of points: 1. There are lots of politics at small companies too. There are lots of politics in any social context. But it probably isn't institutionalised in a small company. For example, in a big company you might hear the head of one department instructing people to lie about something in order to manipulate the people in another department. In a startup that would just be one person lying to another peerson. And if you're not in the room at the time you would know it was going on. 2. It doesn't matter how great your people are, if you have more than about 8 of them you need some structure and process. Companies don't adopt structure in order to cope with dummy's, but that's a useful side effect. 3. I doubt companies take on dummies because they've exhausted the pool of quality people. The pool of quality people is much too big for one company to exhaust, and it gets replenished every year. But great people are rarely on the market. Also, people don't deliberately hire dummies, they're just willing to accept slightly less talent than they themselves have. So, the more layers you have between the founders and the latest hire, the lower the hiring quality can get.