> It's also worth pointing out that you can use your industry experience to develop essential political skills, and I'm not talking about how to be a Machiavellian dick. If you want to be a good leader, work on learning how to inspire and influence people's hearts and minds to work toward a common goal. Learn how to ask good questions and really listen.

This is another vastly understated benefit of working at a company rather than starting a start-up.

You not only get to see what code at-scale looks like and deal with it everyday, but also management. You can either learn good or bad management techniques watching your own manager interact with your team. Same goes for how the org is structured and how the stresses of that structure trickle down to grievances at the Software Engineer I level.