The literary devices used in this are grating.

The repetition that the beginning is trite. Fake conversations, pretend thoughts, conversations with the reader, overly hip tone.

It might be normal in a business book but in the end it just gets in the way of the content.

It worked for me.

I'm not a big fan of Rands' writing style either, but I have to say the content is usually worth the trouble.

This sounds like a good argument against working for large companies.

Yeah, but not everyone can follow that advice ^_^, and more to the point, there are some things we want to accomplish that can't be done in smaller companies. Jet planes, power plants, all sort of neat stuff.

I don't know if it's accurate to say that power plants and jet planes can't be done by small companies. Instead of one big company, the work could be split among a number of smaller companies.

I don't know the history of Boeing or the major powerplant constructors, but I'd guess that a lot of them have formed over time from the consolidation of smaller companies.

Ronald Coase (one of the top 10 economists ever) has a paper about this: firm size is related to factors including communication complexity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase

There are big problems I'd like to solve (cheap space launch optimized for LEO satellite constellations, nuclear power), but since firm size for those problems right now is high, I'd rather work on less-interesting problems which can be more readily addressed by startups, at least until technology advances to let <100 person companies work on the big problems too.

Yeah, but that comes with its own costs, e.g. some of the Dreamliner's delays are due to coordination problems with the many subcontractors who are making much more of this plane than has previously been the pattern with Boeing.

That's only a part, the new type of construction (composites), at least at this scale, is a factor as well.

But there's no denying that adding communications costs hurts a lot in big (well, any size of) projects. And if your history supposition is correct, why did the smaller companies combine?

I think the issue is cost reduction and margins. They have to run things a bit thin. Partially why they get so hungry for gov't contracts.

There's two points in this article

1) Your req can disappear

2) Your candidate can disappear

The latter has nothing to do with big company vs. little company. The former may be somewhat more of an issue in the face of large company politics, but startups and small companies have hiring freezes and shifting priorities as well.

Candidates turning down an offer after accepting is more likely to happen to a small company than to a large one. It's always hard to leave the job one loves for a job one thinks they'll love, it's harder when uncertainty of a start-up enters the mix. On the other hand, it's a lot easier for a start-up to make a candidate feel wanted (because that's actually the case).