Cool post. I think that large company environments often lead many employees to not take themselves seriously.

Large companies do best when very few people are allowed to take themselves seriously and the rest are encouraged to work with their heads down and not share or pursue ideas. As a company increases in size, its appetite for ideas is decreased and there are fewer forums for sharing those ideas. As roles specialize, the optimum strategy is to keep employees doing unipurpose activities for long periods of time.

Granted there are some exceptions, but I think that fundamentally working for yourself or for a small company encourages you to take yourself seriously.