I overwhelmingly agree and think an additional problem is that a large portion of "technology companies" are not really technology companies. Most are actually consuming and applying technology - not developing new technology in any major sense. For example, is your run of the mill VC backed company churning out an app with a sprinkle of social integration and location awareness a technology company? - I would argue that calling what they do "technology development" is quite generous.
The resulting problem is that most of these companies do not really care about pushing technology forward or contributing relevance to the technological sphere - just figuring out the right arrangement of features to make the things not completely fall apart. Just as an anecdote during my career Ive worked with 4 Phds (Stanford, MITx2, Brown)... in each one of those cases they were essentially very educated software implementers - management would dole out tasks to myself and them that were just typical... we need an ad unit here, an app for this, analytics system for this, landing page for this. I don't criticize the Phds I worked with in that Im sure they were trying to pay their bills like everyone else but it was disheartening that our current system/environment had allowed such great minds to be puppets of management who were the least qualified in the room to be working with technology.
The resulting problem is that most of these companies do not really care about pushing technology forward or contributing relevance to the technological sphere - just figuring out the right arrangement of features to make the things not completely fall apart. Just as an anecdote during my career Ive worked with 4 Phds (Stanford, MITx2, Brown)... in each one of those cases they were essentially very educated software implementers - management would dole out tasks to myself and them that were just typical... we need an ad unit here, an app for this, analytics system for this, landing page for this. I don't criticize the Phds I worked with in that Im sure they were trying to pay their bills like everyone else but it was disheartening that our current system/environment had allowed such great minds to be puppets of management who were the least qualified in the room to be working with technology.