[android-developers] Re: Career as an Andoid developer. Is there any point?

I meant something far more narrow.

If you work create a phone app as a work-for-hire, whether as a contractor, vendor, or even as an employee, you will be expected to produce what they're asking for. Often, in this scenario, it will be on a tight budget, and quite narrowly defined.

This is in contrast with doing something on your own, where you have a wide open field, and can pursue whatever idea interests you.

The question of whether you can innovate in a large company depends a lot on both you and the company. Some large companies are quite well known for encouraging innovation. To take one very significant (though somewhat historical) example: Xerox.

I've worked in Digital Equipment's Cambridge Research Lab. Plenty of room to explore and innovate there. But had I been hired, even as an employee, to create "an Android app", that would be different -- at least for the life of that product.

Sometimes that kind of relationship though can be a route into a company, and lead to more interesting work.

I'd like to highlight one thing you said: "I was always innovating, in small and large ways". That's a good attitude, and expectation, to go into any work, even the most narrowly defined. There's always room for innovation in small ways, and you will always learn more, be worth more, and have more fun.

I only meant to illustrate the that there can be a trade-off between work-for-hire and your own work, in terms of how freely you can innovate.

On Saturday, May 28, 2011 9:07:57 PM UTC-7, DanH wrote:

I do take issue with the argument that there's no room for innovation
with big (or small) corporations.  I've spent most of my career (about
36 years) working for large corporations, and, save for the last 2-3
years of that time (when my employer essentially decided they were out
of the innovation business), I was always innovating, in small and
large ways.  I have my name on something like 20 patents, I won
several awards from my company, and I had the opportunity to work on a
number of interesting projects.

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