I've worked for a big pension fund and it was exactly like one imagines. Many meetings, a quiet office, slow and boring. I've also worked for small tech-focussed companies with technical nerds as founders; they were rather different, with music, dogs, vodka and late nights.
Oh and age matters too: after I had a kid, the late nights and vodka were not something I had the energy for.
If it's too high, you're not in a technology company in the sense we're idolizing here.
... And I'm also not sure "that" sort of tech company can exist above a certain size. No corporate silo firewall is strong enough to keep the business bullshit at bay.
See: the other posters comment about small profitable bootstrapped businesses being the only way to do this now. Successful indie devs are an anomaly. But my point was more that companies are far more risk averse these days than to let a group like Romero et. al. run loose on a new product idea without strict controls in place, and that the types of people selected for by these companies now ensures that.
Punk rock is small by definition. Once it becomes large it changes to mainstream.
I'm not saying people should not work in startups - they have their place in the industry. But there is nothing "punk rock" about them.
If you want to break rules and work outside the lines, we have come full circle to the 90s - bootstrapped small businesses are the way to go.
Unfortunately... because most of the world has taken their eyes off keeping markets competitive, it's less viable now than it once was, because the table stakes capital requirements are larger.
I think it comes down to the fact that our industry has become rigid and beholden to the university education system. John Carmack and John Romero were both college dropouts. Their stories would probably be impossible today. What we have now is a world of people coloring between the lines and going straight from one set of rules to another. There truly is no more punk rock left in tech.