I find this to be a major thesis in many of your essays, but I've got to know... do you feel it would be bad for your brain to work in google research or (gasp) microsoft research or academia? I mean, I would bet working for Norvig is a more significant mental workout than founding many of the yc companies.
In earlier versions of the essay I had a sentence saying that in a sufficiently pure research job, you're effectively working for yourself. I don't know about Google specifically, but I get the impression Bell Labs at its height was like that.
I imagine Bell Labs would have been an incredible place if only based on people that worked there. I wonder how close IBM and HP were at their research peaks. Also, I should mention that I wasn't intentionally picking on yc companies and perhaps that was the wrong choice. Some of the technology coming out of a few of them seems to be more interesting than some of the best labs. I know that isn't the goal, but it certainly isn't bad side effect! I really only meant to pick on the droves of obscure, uninteresting <insert social aspect here> startups.
I think the main constraint is the lack of creativity and the variety of tasks one has to perform in a big company. In a startup there are so many challenges and so many things to learn its always changing,
From personal experience, MS Research (and reportedly, Yahoo Research) is an awesome place to work for researchers; lots of freedom to do what you want and push the boundaries of what's possible. What you learn there is very different from what you learn doing a startup, of course, but the point about lack of creativity or freedom aint valid.
Interestingly, Google research is not very good in this respect due to their focus on products. Restricts creativity; if you really want to do products and be creative, get into a startup instead.
I have the same impression about ms research which is what prompted the post. I have no idea what financial compensation is at either place, but there is little, if any, financial risk and everyone I've talked to at ms research loves what they do. These comments are coming from the furthest thing from corporate drones or intellectual lightweights. They have a substantial amount of intellectual freedom and I'm assuming a decent lifestyle. So why is startup life so _obviously_ better than this?
No, startup life isn't better than this. But the point is that either of them is better (probabilistically, I think - I know of plenty of my research friends who hate doing what they do) than being a creatively restrained minion in a large company.
Btw, compensation wise, MSR is one of the best as well. The only (and quite serious) downside to MSR is their stupid insistence on using Windows everywhere. Researchers absolutely hate that.
