I want to work on challenging problems that have a real world impact. Right now, I personally thinking that building distributed data infrastructure is such a problem. If I were to start or join a small web/business software startup chances are I'd never actually get to solve this problem: I know I'll never be happy if I'm not solving what I think is the most fascinating problem I have the aptitude to solve. I've left companies in the past for this reason and (as pg had said a number of times) lack of determination to succeed is more important than raw intelligence.
I could start a systems startup, but having worked for such a company in the past, I know I don't want to start one, especially at this stage in my career: finding funding (this isn't something you can bootstrap), customer support, doing business development (to find a sales channel) and/or sales/marketing (the sales model is not self-serve) would be what I'd spend huge portions most of my time on. Note how that list doesn't include "solving actual technical problems" -- doing something I love would only be a minority of my time. Nor would I have access to true scalability challenges (i.e., to envision scenarios that my customers would encounter further down the line) like I do at my current employer.
Might I do a startup one day? Sure, if it's the best way for me to solve the problems that I find meaningful and interesting. As for the money? Not really a motivating factor, plus statistically it's just not likely that I'll make more as an entrepreneur than as a software engineer.
I could start a systems startup, but having worked for such a company in the past, I know I don't want to start one, especially at this stage in my career: finding funding (this isn't something you can bootstrap), customer support, doing business development (to find a sales channel) and/or sales/marketing (the sales model is not self-serve) would be what I'd spend huge portions most of my time on. Note how that list doesn't include "solving actual technical problems" -- doing something I love would only be a minority of my time. Nor would I have access to true scalability challenges (i.e., to envision scenarios that my customers would encounter further down the line) like I do at my current employer.
Might I do a startup one day? Sure, if it's the best way for me to solve the problems that I find meaningful and interesting. As for the money? Not really a motivating factor, plus statistically it's just not likely that I'll make more as an entrepreneur than as a software engineer.