Understanding Startup Offers
It would be interesting to see some analysis comparing pre-IPO offers versus standard FAANG-style engineering offers and see what the monetary difference actually is.<p>In the not-so-distant past, start ups were pretty much the only avenue to secure a multiple-million dollar personal liquidity event, in the off chance you join a successful start up, work your tail off, and the company gets to a point where that exit happened (which was and still is rare).<p>But nowadays, with software development offers being what they are are large public companies with outstanding growth prospects, the argument that you need to join a start up to fast track earning millions is pretty much out the window. Not only do people who are working at large stable companies like Google &amp; Facebook have the generous perks and large company work life balance stability behind them - they are also soundly beating almost all &quot;successful&quot; start up offers in terms of compensation over the long term.<p>I would love to see some real life practical numbers with start up offers at different stages of funding and how that would really compare to simply working at Google or Facebook over the same time horizon.<p>It seems the only reasons to work at a start up these days are if you really really love building products, want to wear many different hats, are frustrated by the pace of big companies, and are stifled by the big company processes that dominate the day to day life working at these companies.<p>Compelling reasons to work for a start up for sure, but compensation is not even in the top 10 reason to join a start up anymore, IMO.