If you want to work on a AAA level product (or even a AA product nowadays), that's increasingly becoming out of reach with a small team. Some people want to work on games that millions of people will play and enjoy. I know a guy who made and released a few small games on his own (I helped with one of them) and they sold like 1000 copies at most, but he maintains a day job in the industry for the past 12 years and is currently a senior engineer at Epic Games working on AAA titles.
Meanwhile I'm working on a small game in my spare time this past couple of years and I'm worried I might not break 1000 copies with its release either (not the prettiest game and a bit of a niche genre, but I'm on my own in my spare time). But at least I have a fairly well paying day webdev job so I'm not screwed if it doesn't do well.
I suspect this leads to a trend where you have disproportionately more mediocre product/vision people at the large gaming companies, because if you have really good product sense in a space with as much passion as video games, and with a relatively low barrier to getting your foot in the door (if you have a small core team of very talented, dedicated people), what on Earth are you doing being a cog in someone else's machine?