I can't speak to the actual work yet as I haven't started, but I just accepted an offer as a senior / staff level engineer in NYC at one of the smaller public tech companies (think Dropbox, Lyft, Pinterest, Snap, etc) after 10+ years of being self-employed. I had two startups offer me $170k plus some (probably worthless) options. When the offer I ultimately accepted came in, I had several more startup interviews lined up and likely could have gotten closer to $180k - 200k from the startups.
Now, $200k isn't bad. But the offer I accepted from the public tech company is for $420k the first year [2], and will likely go up from there, especially if the stock does well. It's not crazy to think I could be making $600k - 800k within a few years. And to be honest, I think it's on the low end for the big tech companies at my level. And it doesn't come with some crazy grind as far as I can tell. People seem to actually work 40 hours, the PTO policy is flexible and people take 20-25 days a year off, people work from home when they need to, the benefits are solid, etc.
After this experience and seeing the huge disparity in pay, I would never go work at some random startup unless I was founder level or deeply, deeply believed in their mission.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837849
2. It's $200k base, $800k RSUs over 4 years, $20k signing bonus. Role is IC, iOS engineer. 12 years of experience, 9 in iOS, all self-employed. I have a business degree from a state school, and I've never had a software engineering job.