Workforce experience reminds me of the old story about the shoe salesman who goes to look for a job: "I have 20 years experience", he says to his prospective

Workforce experience reminds me of the old story about the shoe salesman who goes to look for a job: "I have 20 years experience", he says to his prospective boss. "No you don't.", the interviewer replies. "You've had 6 months of experience 40 times over." The corporate trenches are sort of like that. You do learn some stuff, but not much, and you learn it awful quickly. 90% of the interesting aspects of my "trade" that I've learned have been on my own. Corporate work (for developers) seems ok (but not great) for gaining domain expertise. It is a great way to meet people with domain expertise. Other than that, it's not good for much. Large organizations seem considerably less than the sum of their parts.