I guess we'll never know, will we? :) That said, I don't think my unhappiness working for others has anything to do with other people making me feel that way o

I guess we'll never know, will we? :) That said, I don't think my unhappiness working for others has anything to do with other people making me feel that way or with my competence or the competence of others. Heck, I'm VP of Engineering right now at a company doing 10s of millions in revenue and growing like crazy and I still feel like something is missing. My realization is that it needs to my skin in the game to not feel like I'm "just another dev" or perhaps more generally, "just another cog in the machine". Working for someone else, I don't see how I could ever reach the level of personal risk, reward and gratification that it has taken me a long time to realize I need. I can't escape it at someone else's startup or someone else's big company. I bounced from job to job, year after year, thinking it was just culture or not enough responsibilities, or too many responsibilities, not enough money, or too much money. These were all wrong.