[rustyboy]

> Big corp jobs, especially at non-software companies will tend to treat people as isolated cogs in the big machine, a machine you're told by everyone is "someone else's job" to understand and steer.

In my experience at a massive company this is spot on, as a mentor it feels like I spend more time on teaching new hires to realize that we're not a "technology company that does X". We are, in fact, a boring X company that uses technology when it's needed. Not everything has a complex technical solution. Sometimes the best thing you can do, even as a software engineer, involves changing processes, organizational structure, or bad habits.

When I read these "software" articles and books it feels like a radically different world than what I do.