This isn't a "youth problem". 20-year-olds and 50-year-olds aren't natural enemies, and most people don't think that way. Blaming this on one side is ridiculous. When 50-year-old chickenhawk VCs only want to fund 25-year-olds, that's not the fault of one generation or the other. (Can you blame it on the young for taking the opportunity? No. Can you blame it on the old when it's only a few making those decisions that are hurting most of them? No.)
The real issue is the cool/substance chasm, which the article describes well.
If you want substance, you can work for the government or a big corporation... your salary growth will average 5% per year, your advancement will be political, and you'll probably never be able to afford a house in the Bay Area or New York. You'll also be at the mercy of corporate actions (mergers, etc.) that might move you out of your fun R&D job and into the basement.
If you play for cool, there's a 90% chance you waste years of your life you can never get back, a 9% chance you break even on opportunity cost, a 0.9% chance that you never have to work again (after wearing yourself out over 10 years of a manic-depressive startup existence, and "retirement" being an artifact of adrenal exhaustion, moderate wealth, and apathy), and a 0.1% chance of getting so rich that it was actually worth it.
What we need is a middle path. We have the golden skill that makes us capable of 15-40% annual growth (in salary, economic value, etc.) Between criminally inefficient large organizations (which produce "substance", but inefficiently and with painful wastes of effort) and flash-seeking careerist venture capitalists ("cool")-- a path that might "average" 50%/year career returns but with so much noise that the median outcome is poor-- no one will let us. That's the problem.
This way of thinking about it is interesting. For many people, me included, entrepreneurship is first and foremost a existential choice.
Do you have some examples of what this middle path might look like? For the entrepreneurial-minded, is it different from what is commonly viewed as "lifestyle business" or bootstrapped revenue-first side-project (that might later turn into a solid small-scale business)?
Mid-risk/mid-growth businesses. Designed to grow at 15-40% per year and hire selectively (see: Valve). Can have a desirable culture (e.g. open allocation) that wouldn't survive 75%/year personnel growth. Too risky for bank loans (personal liability) but not the billions-or-bollocks long-shot gambits that are career-making for VCs. But still potentially very profitable if VCs took a portfolio mentality rather than a careerist "I want the next Facebook because of what it'll do for my reputation" approach.
You're describing basically a high-end consultancy or niche enterprise business. These jobs exist, and they aren't particularly hard to find, but you do have to go out and actively search for them. Companies like this don't make the news; they build personal relationships with companies in their industry and then quietly get contracts. You find out about them through your network; once you've worked in an industry for a while you'll know all the niche players, and probably be able to get a job there if you're any good.
I interned at one of these in college. I found it wasn't personally for me, because a.) the pace of work was too slow and b.) customers can be a bitch, with often conflicting requirements, and when you're a mid-size enterprise business you don't get to aggregate many customers together into a product. But for someone with a different risk/reward tradeoff from myself, they can be very pleasant places to work.
Partnership-like arrangements would seem to be an obvious choice of structure for such firms. Valve seems to be basically a single-proprietorship that tries to run and compensates itself like ye olde professional partnership. The problem is, how to get capitalists on board without giving them enough equity to undermine the partnership goal? Partnership isn't an obviously good match with long development times or significant capital costs. Valve had a founder who was willing to play the benevolent owner-operator using his own hoard of stock-option money.
The real issue is the cool/substance chasm, which the article describes well.
If you want substance, you can work for the government or a big corporation... your salary growth will average 5% per year, your advancement will be political, and you'll probably never be able to afford a house in the Bay Area or New York. You'll also be at the mercy of corporate actions (mergers, etc.) that might move you out of your fun R&D job and into the basement.
If you play for cool, there's a 90% chance you waste years of your life you can never get back, a 9% chance you break even on opportunity cost, a 0.9% chance that you never have to work again (after wearing yourself out over 10 years of a manic-depressive startup existence, and "retirement" being an artifact of adrenal exhaustion, moderate wealth, and apathy), and a 0.1% chance of getting so rich that it was actually worth it.
What we need is a middle path. We have the golden skill that makes us capable of 15-40% annual growth (in salary, economic value, etc.) Between criminally inefficient large organizations (which produce "substance", but inefficiently and with painful wastes of effort) and flash-seeking careerist venture capitalists ("cool")-- a path that might "average" 50%/year career returns but with so much noise that the median outcome is poor-- no one will let us. That's the problem.