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Isn't it a pretty big caveat to exclude people who've "worked for a startup and it's failed", given how large a proportion of startups fail? I mean, sure, if you only consider employees of startups that ended up with large exits, things look a lot rosier than if you look at the whole set of startup employees.

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Yes, sorry.

I should have said: people who have never worked for a startup that has succeeded, or for a startup that has failed, but has provided a valuable enough experience to justify working there.

You're still selecting for those with favorable startup employment experiences, so the problem still stands: excluding them does not give an accurate picture of the typical result if bad experience is what's typical.

Now the question is: when a startup fails, how often does it turn out to be a valuable experience anyway?

The most valuable experiences out of it are a bit of humility and growing your personal network. That's why this kind of employment IMO only worth it in the beginning of your career.

i think the hands-on, general experience at a startup far outweighs the silo'd, specialized experience at a big company anyday

You're deep in tautology land. Of course people that had a good experience with startups had a good experience with startups.

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