I am one frustrated developer (yes yes I know I am not supposed to call myself a developer but WTH!). Why is it so difficult for these large formal companies to appreciate the facts that: 1. Give your programmers a nice office preferably with views of the sky or traffic 2. Allow them to dress down most of the time 3. Allow them to work flexible hours, i.e. focus more on the products they produce than the time they spend seated at their desks 4. Give them the tools, hardware and software, that they crave 5. Give them an immediate boss who knows his/her stuff 6. Pay them just well enough to enable them NOT worry about the cost of living but not so well that they start thinking of buying a BMW X3 Then, challenging the living daylights out of them will almost inevitably lead to unique and innovative products that will earn the company lots of money/customers/street cred etc Or am I living in some sort of code induced coma? I would love to know how the developers at AT, Craft Silicon, Virtual City work... :-)