This is a great post. A much more balanced perspective. I worked at a large well-known company, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit there and learned a lot of engineering. My leaving had almost nothing to do with them - I had to relocate for personal/family reasons, and I combined it with starting up. I have been reasonably successful, though I started for the "wrong reasons". I actually was sad to leave that bigCo.
I still have gifted friends "over there" and they are quite happy, seem to enjoy what they do, and have no intention of leaving. From a purely technical perspective, I have to say they have done some really interesting work - more than I can say about my own technical work. I have learned other things like product management, sales & marketing.
Keep in mind what kinds of innovations that Bell Labs & IBM Research & Xerox Parc (my bigCo was like them in a way) produced during the few decades of their high point. The foundations of this industry were laid in those places, and they were all huge companies.
I've been avoiding this whole latest essay debacle, but this essay particularly struck me. It is not a balanced perspective at all in my opinion, and is quite frankly the silliest and saddest rebuttal I've read so far.
What this person fundamentally doesn't understand is sacrifice, the key component to starting any company, and having any sort of real success in life. Does this person honestly think that starting a company entails living a life of poverty forever? I mean give me a break, you can spend your life eating at fancy restaurants and going to museums when you're 50. When you start a company, you give up ephemeral comforts like eating at PF Changs for a short period of time for a chance to do something incredible. The argument that you shouldn't start a start up because you will not have a lot of cash for a fews months or a few years is pretty shallow in my opinion. In fact, its much sillier to say "you are lame because you can't afford to eat out for a limited period of time" than it is to say "you are lame because you haven't started a company" (not that pg implied that).
I had this guy's life. Before Y Combinator, I worked at a very high profile company on a very high profile product, and had all the money I needed to buy the latest and greatest tv, or take my girlfriend to a fancy restaurant or go on some fancy vacation. My cofounder and I ate out EVERY night. We owned crazy gadgets, we bought expensive toys.
Guess what: that's not what happiness is about. And thank god. At the end of the day, unless you're curing cancer or something, you will not feel whole, even when working on something incredible. At least I didn't.
Now I'm in Y Combinator. I get way less sleep. I am stressed all the time. There's no such things as weekends.
But I'm doing something, and if I succeed, it will be mine. And if I don't, well guess what, I can still always go back to that old life.
And at the end of the day, that's the most important thing: the worst case scenario for me, is the best case scenario for this guy.
If you fail will you be happy with going back to your old life? Will you all of a sudden enjoy being in a "cage"? What happens if you're only happy when working on startups and every single one of them fails? Will you be poor forever? What if your current startup succeeds? Will you stick with it as it becomes a large company or leave and try to recreate the startup environment you enjoyed so much? (it seems to me that YC might be a way for PG to relive his startup days, which is why he tries to reproduce the Viaweb model so closely).
Provides a nice contrarian perspective. Though I personally don't function like that, I can understand workers who work to enable other more important things (family, hobbies, etc). In essence, they trade being caged for stability, safety, personal time, etc. To some, that can be happiness too.
I don't think it takes anything away from PG's original point that for a lot of younger, more ambitious folks, being caged is not the best way to live or work.
Well in some sense perhaps .. you can also say working your ass off is like becoming "caged in work". The question really is what is more important to YOU. If doing excellent technical work or making money is your first priority, then if you are working in a megacorp, then one can say you are caged. On the other hand, spending time with your family or watching movies or travelling are important to you, startup life is a cage for you and you will feel "trapped" by work.
"Does it strike you as odd that the startup founders at YCombinator apparently get told when they can take a day off? Me too."
That is pure and utter crap... There isn't a single mandatory day at YC (though you'd have to be a little daft to miss Demo Day). Paul (and the other folks at YC) haven't the slightest clue what hours (or days) the founders keep.
I still have gifted friends "over there" and they are quite happy, seem to enjoy what they do, and have no intention of leaving. From a purely technical perspective, I have to say they have done some really interesting work - more than I can say about my own technical work. I have learned other things like product management, sales & marketing.
Keep in mind what kinds of innovations that Bell Labs & IBM Research & Xerox Parc (my bigCo was like them in a way) produced during the few decades of their high point. The foundations of this industry were laid in those places, and they were all huge companies.