I've worked 5 years in 3 startups, 5 years in 2 large development teams, and my experience has shown that there are, percentage wise, better developers working in startups. This is in Austin, so it may not reflect the valley, but the absolute best programmers I've worked with are trying their hands at startups. There's a sweet spot of people aged 28-35 that are really skilled developers that still have an appetite for risk that are working in startups.
Do you think this is more a reflection of the limited quality of the larger players in the Austin scene?
I came to Austin from the Valley as part of an acquisition and have been looking for other employers in Austin, but the options for larger firms seem rather limited. I have yet to start exploring the small start-ups, which is why I am curious.
In Austin, it used to be the case that IBM (and possibly Motorola or a few other places) had a serious lock on all of the seriously good people. The projects were cool, the environment was excellent (if you didn't mind managers selected by vocal volume). I'm talking about the guys who did the cell processor, the AIX kernel folks, a bunch of people who did good UI work, and so on.
When the internet boom rolled around in the late '90s and the startup scene hotted up, most of the people in it were straight out of school. When I interviewed around in the mid 2000s, experienced people were kind of rare.
On the other hand, about the same time IBM became a consulting service company. The cool, visible projects evaporated. All of the good people I knew at the time either got buried deep somewhere (and are presumably happy in their niche) or left.
It's been years since I moved away from Austin, though, so I've got no idea what it's like now.
I've worked 5 years in 3 startups, 5 years in 2 large development teams, and my experience has shown that there are, percentage wise, better developers working in startups. This is in Austin, so it may not reflect the valley, but the absolute best programmers I've worked with are trying their hands at startups. There's a sweet spot of people aged 28-35 that are really skilled developers that still have an appetite for risk that are working in startups.