You weren't meant to have a boss

Woo, you sound just like me. I recall a conversation in the canteen with a colleague recently where I said something along the lines of "... this place is so mediocre ... there has to be something better ..." and she replied with "well its just a job, you have to work somewhere, there are plenty of places worse".

She has clearly decided to settle!

I also agree with the less ambitious people doing well - I liken it to Seth Godin's book The Dip - those people are willing to lean into the organisation and just settle for its way. The more ambitious can sometimes see just how wrong things are and lean against it, hence doing badly in the company. If you are going to do well in a big corporation, you have to learn to play by its rules and settle unfortunately ... I haven't done that yet, but its a daily struggle!

I'm 26 and just passed my fifth year at a very large company (18000+), with four years in IT and the past year in Software Engineering. I've been looking for an oppurtunity at a smaller company, since my current one is stifling my ability to learn and be productive.

The issue I'm finding is that small companies are typically looking for someone with more experience than I could currently offer. Has anyone else come across this issue? It seems to me (and others where I work) that we have to somehow pay our dues and get experience at a large company before we gather enough experience to become valuable assets to smaller companies.

Bridgewater Associates is a large (~400 employees, $36 billion assets) hedge fund that tries to avoid hierarchy:

http://www.bwater.com/home/philosophy.aspx

"Conflict in the pursuit of excellence is a terrific thing and is strongly encouraged, in fact demanded. There should be no (or as little as possible) hierarchy. Certainly there are organizational "superior-subordinate" relationships; however, every "subordinate" is encouraged to argue with his or her "superior" if he or she thinks they know the better way, and every "superior" is required to encourage this."

"That might be worth exploring. I suspect there are already some highly partitionable businesses that lean this way. But I don't know any technology companies that have done it."

I believe Gore-Tex may work this way

When I started reading this I thought it was going to suck. I thought he'd rant on big companies employees and make startup founders seem cool because of his background. When I was about half way through it started to change; what Paul said really made a lot of sense.

I want to be a researcher, but I also want to make somewhat of a living before getting a masters degree and stuff; so I can be completely independent. I thought joining a big company would be a good start because it would pay me good, I would be able to learn stuff and they could even help me out with my masters degree.

What hadn't hit me up until now is that, by doing that, I wasn't getting closer to my goal to be independent. I would just switch from the parent tree to the company tree; different pressures, but the same dependence. I start to think now that in order to be independent, to have the freedom of doing what pleases you most, you have to start your own company. You have to be your own means of survival. That's getting into the wild and finally living in a democracy.

I'm disgressing a little now, but it's because of this thing someone told me once. He made me realise that we actually live in a dictatorship most of the time. Your parents tell you what to do, then your boss tells you what to do; and you have very little say. In order to feel more like your opinions matter and that you can actually do something about the world, I guess you have to have the freedom to be able to say what you want, to code what you want, etc.

So, in the end, I was surprised. Very good article, as Paul usually writes.