My experience is that big tech company jobs are much better than at the typical startup.<p>I got my first job working for one of the big 3 tech companies a couple of years ago after a long string of startups that failed or fizzled going back to the dot-com days. I always felt like I was making reasonable-to-good base salary at startups with the potential to hit it big with stock options.<p>Starting my job as a regular IC at big tech company was immediately an eye opener. Out of the gate my base salary was 10% higher than I made as a manager at my most recent startup. With bonus and publicly traded stock value after a year, I was making ~50% more and stock becoming even more valuable over time.<p>My first startup was great as I went in at 25 with no college and only self taught tech skills. In hindsight, this was a great (probably only) way to start but pivoting to big tech would have been a better move instead of trying to strike it rich at a startup.