A portion of this weeks edition of the Gillmor Gang (MidTail Gang – part IV – ugh!) really hit home for me this week. At around 14:34 in the sub-episode, Jason Calacanis talks about how he feels as an entrepreneur working in a big company. This section lasts through the end of the sub-episode. You have to give this a listen.

I don’t think what Jason is saying is necessarily only a view from an entrepreneurs perspective, but applies to anyone who wants to execute and has built their career on the ability to execute. As a company grows larger and things get more political, it becomes extremely difficult to execute anything, which can become extremely frustrating for anyone who just wants to get things done without having to talk about it for three months.

One quote that Jason threw out bears repeating:

Centralization and consolidation, I think, are two of the worst forces for building great product. Once you centralize stuff and put in controls, it just – it kills the process.

I think its great that Jason can be so honest about the experiences he is having at AOL. You rarely hear someone talk about these things and it was very refreshing to hear something that hit so close to home.

I must have listened to this section about 4 times last night on the way home. This section, in and of itself, was worth the 5 part download yesterday.