I can definitely relate to this. My own journey is, in addition to a couple of stints as a founder that didn't work out, I've worked primarily for other startups as opposed to large companies. After 10 years what I have to show for it is about $35,000 from one moderate sized acquisition of a startup you've definitely heard of but was not especially lucrative for anyone except the founders, some options that I never exercised and are worth 0 today since the company shut down, some other options that I never exercised and lost 3 months after leaving the company that may or may not be worth something eventually but I couldn't afford to exercise/didn't feel strongly enough to make a big bet on, and now finally some options where I have 8 years left on a 10 year exercise window which may actually go somewhere (but could also end up at $0 or something minimal).

I had other peers in my graduating class in college that went to work at places like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon while I went to do a startup with a few friends, then ended up mostly working as an employee for these other startups. I find it interesting to idly muse about what would have happened to someone who'd joined one of those companies in an entry level engineering role in 2010 and stayed there while having a fairly average career trajectory, say getting to a senior engineer level 5 years in and then plateauing, going from a stock grant size of maybe $50k a year when joining to $150k a year at senior level. Doing some rough estimates based on stock prices over the years, if you'd been in that position at any of these companies and never sold any stock you'd have something like $2.5 million (Google), $4 million (Microsoft) or $6 million (Amazon) in stock today. And of course your base salary and cash bonuses over that time would have been higher than your base salary working for startups.

I don't say this to complain, I'm still doing fine overall and there are a lot of people in the world who work very hard for a lot less. But I also don't feel like I've really accomplished much of any significance. It's pretty mind-blowing to realize that the less risky, more tortoise-like approach to a career would have been so vastly more profitable than what I've experienced at what I would say have been a pretty average selection of startups. And it's not like the startups have been so much more fulfilling, you're still pretty much a cog in the machine as an engineer even at a 30 person company.

In conclusion - working at a startup smaller than, say, series D is a fool's game and a very likely path to one day looking back and feeling like you haven't accomplished anything. Either become a founder to try to build something meaningful from nothing, or just work at a FAANG company as a 9-5 and get your fulfillment elsewhere and/or retire young.