Ask HN: Employers: how many devs have left your company to do their own thing?

1 points by mvkel ↗ HN
The line between developer culture and entrepreneurial culture has been getting increasingly blurry over the past decade. It's rare that I hear of a developer that's happy just working for a company.<p>While I of course understand the want/need for one to do their own thing, it seems like it's becoming the definition of success for a developer -- building a product that takes off, rather than making great contributions to something they don't necessarily own.<p>My window into this world is pretty one-sided, which is why I'm posting this here; I'd love to hear stories about devs that are on the other side of the coin, [government contractor], Google, Microsoft and Apple excepted.<p>I tried finding statistics on the backgrounds of tech entrepreneurs but couldn't find anything definitive. It'd be interesting to see how many are developers breaking out.<p>It's saddening to think a company can have the best culture, team fit, benefits and salary, but it's just a holding pattern in the eyes of some.<p>I say all this fully aware of the irony that I'm puzzled by my own actions. I guess that's how it's supposed to work? :)

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None, but we try super hard to encourage open source contribution whenever possible.