you say that like working for someone else is bad - do you think your startup will have no customers? (for whom you'll be working_for harder than your boss)
You're overparsing my intention. When you work for another company, there is always someone else who ultimately has to sign off on your decisions; I'd far rather be the person with whom the buck always stops.
That's not necessarily true. I can code basically whatever I want. I just can't launch it without Marissa's approval. But there are more potential internal users at Google than most startups ever get anyway, and anything with significant internal traction will likely get launched regardless of the decision-makers' opinions.
With my day job right now, I determine our release schedule, what features go into the product, how things get implemented, what tools we use, what languages we use, what hardware we purchase, what development methodologies we use, how we build, how we test, how we handle user training, how we deal with bug reports, what candidates we hire, which people we fire, and I don't have to ask for permission to do any of these things.
But, it's not my company; and what I can and can't do could change instantly if the guy at the top of the org chart decides on a whim that things are going to be done differently. While I don't think it's likely to happen, it's still a possibility; and you have a lot less of that when it's you at top of the chart.
[Edit: I just want to preempt some other angles if I can; I know that things get muddy when you deal with investors and and boards of directors, and when you deal with partners and staff and all of those things. There's a bit of nuance here that I'm somehow not conveying. I guess at this point you either get what I'm saying or you don't.]
If the guy at the top decides on a whim that things are going to be done differently, you can just keep doing what you're doing. If he doesn't like it, he can fire you, and then you're in exactly the same position as if you'd quit to pursue a startup. Except that you probably have a bit more savings, a bit more experience, and a bit more of a desire to prove him wrong.
