Actually, it's not even about being an invention factory pe se. What appeals to me is a combination of being eager to work with cutting-edge technology, build cool stuff fast, and sticking to one's principles about how things *should* work. Good startups can (and often must) do all of those in order to succeed. Larger companies, for a host of reasons, almost inevitably get more conservative because they have more to lose. Once you're the size of a small city, you even wind up needing to think in terms of large-scale impersonal governance, instead of village-style consensus.

None of that is really a plus or a minus in any kind of absolute moral sense. But I do enjoy the riskier and more interesting life, as well as the more personal environment. (Especially once I finally got it through my head that there is no such thing as real job security, so I may as well have fun with my insecurity...)