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Comment by brc | Hacker News Reader

I think there's one big thing missing here : the potential to meet future collaborators. A large company is the ideal place to find other people with skills and burning desires to do other things. You can find out if they have these skills by observing their output while someone else is paying. When it comes time to form your own, you should at least have a good shortlist of people to invite on board.

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By that token graduate school is also an excellent place to meet future collaborators. If you go to a school that is decent, or better, you're surrounded by very smart and motivated individuals who will be looking for work within 4 years. You can see them give presentations, read their work, drink with them at pubs and work together... all good experiences to get to know them.

This may be true, but there is a difference between studying together and working together in a commercial enterprise. I've found the people I studied with drifted away whereas people I've worked with stick closer by. That, and people you meet through study all tend to be of the same skillset, whereas people you meet through work have varied skillsets.

He touches on this:

"Even in the age of social media, it is still often about who knows you, and knows you can do a good job. If your boss did a successful project he will often seek to 'reunite the band' for another gig years later. A big company gives you a chance to impress and end up in the address books of lots of future high fliers. And they will take your call when you have something to sell and arrange an introduction for you on the strength of your past performance."

Yes I read that. I was thinking the reverse - identifying peers with talent that you can pick up and work together with in the future, rather than attaching yourself to a talented boss. I see it as a slight distinction.

Isn't that splitting hairs? Two sides of the same subject. You'd have to be really short-sighted to not see the other side of the coin. :)

I think a further thing that builds on your thing is the ability to be exposed to ideas that need solving. Big companies have lots of pain points, things that an unemployed grad or person who has only ever worked in 10 person companies is never likely to be exposed to. Coming up with ways to solve these pain points can easily lead to enterprise application startups.

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