I think there's a similar dynamic with consulting - ThoughtWorks / Pivotal Labs type places. You get shunted around between many different projects, there are never enough people, so there are opportunities to take more responsibilities, and things are often a bit fluid, because a consultancy coming in tends to (should!) crack the organisation a bit. There are downsides to all of that, but it's also a way of getting wider faster, if not getting a lot deeper.