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Having worked at both small and big companies, I can say you can learn a lot of different things at both. Diversity of experience is valuable.

Speaking of YC, I'd love to have a Y Combinator for older, more established folks with track records....

A lot of the structure doesn't support older founders. E.g.: "We’ll invest $125k in return for 7% of your company using a 'post-money' Simple Agreement for Future Equity (the 'YC Safe'). We think that $125k is currently the right amount for founders to be able to run their company and pay expenses for around 5-6 months, and sometimes even longer."

$125k will support a team straight out of college. It won't support a team at a stage of their life when they have e.g. families or kids.

> $125k will support a team straight out of college. It won't support a team at a stage of their life when they have e.g. families or kids.

It won't support some at the stage of their life when they have kids or families.

Just like it won't support some straight out of college because they're not going to want to make the sacrifices or have commitments that prevent them.

Also most senior folks don't need 125k because they could and should just self fund this amount

Established folk with a track record and a seemingly good idea can just look around and find investors willing to throw in millions of dollars. I've seen it happen a couple times myself.

> If 1 out of 250 ends up being a $100B company, 0.25% of equity you earn per year is $1M in cash.

Sound like the kind of math a startup would use to lure you in. More like 99.75% of the equity you gain will be worth nothing. And you won’t have 250 jobs in your career. What are the odds you actually land that 1/250 that has a great exit? Less than one in a thousand.

> What are the odds you actually land that 1/250 that has a great exit? Less than one in a thousand.

I’m sorry, but assuming you land in a random startup the odds of landing in the 1/250 would be one out of two hundred and fifty. There are other factors, but saying the odds are <1/1000 requires more justification.

At least I have some math, it looks like you pulled your numbers out of your butt.

It's true that you won't have 250 jobs in your career. But you don't need 250 jobs in your career. Take 10 jobs over 10 years. Eventually stay at the one that's promising. Startup returns have power law distribution, I'm sure you'll make some money eventually.

I don't know, my math might not be perfect, but it's not as ridiculous as you make it look.

> What are the odds you actually land that 1/250 that has a great exit?

What are the odds you're getting that Google job? Google has 0.67% acceptance rate apparently. That's only 7% probability of getting that job over 10 years. Or do you think you're more qualified and your odds are higher? If you think you're more qualified, then why do you think you're less likely to pick the right startup and get the right startup job?

> Take 10 jobs over 10 years. […] I'm sure you'll make some money eventually

Wasn’t it 1/250? Sorry but you’re pulling numbers out of thin air, all you have here is wishful thinking. Fact is most people who work for startups will not “eventually make some money”, their shares will be worthless.

In order to hit it big, you need to either be at the top of your field, which gets you exposure to unique opportunities, or be really good at picking winners (you might as well switch to VC in that case), or just be lucky. You can’t hop from one random startup to another and expect to become rich.

Again, probabilities don’t work like that. You’re not rolling dice to apply to Google, and FAANG jobs are not unattainable, nearly everyone I know that wanted one, got it eventually. Then you have guaranteed high income.

You can choose either life, and the risk/reward ratio is certainly much much higher for startups, but we have to be honest about the odds - they are not great for non-founders.

> Wasn’t it 1/250

I guess my point with that is that you'll still make some money if you get a job at top company #2,#3,#4,#5, etc out of those 250.

> In order to hit it big, you need to either be at the top of your field, which gets you exposure to unique opportunities, or be really good at picking winners (you might as well switch to VC in that case), or just be lucky.

But that's exactly the kind of stuff you have to do get a good job at FAANG, is it not? Don't you need to be at the top of your field? Be a little lucky here and there? Maybe pick the right projects that end up being successful? Be a good fit for those projects?

> You’re not rolling dice to apply to Google, and FAANG jobs are not unattainable, nearly everyone I know that wanted one, got it eventually.

And my point is that it's the same with startups. You're also not just rolling dice. You can usually tell if the company you're joining is run by idiots. I also have a bunch of friends who made money, had successful careers working at startups. I consider myself to be one of those people. To be fair my FAANG friends are doing great too, and they do seem to have more job security :)

> You can choose either life, and the risk/reward ratio is certainly much much higher for startups

That's fair. It's all a bunch of compromises at the end of the day.

> What are the odds you actually land that 1/250 that has a great exit? Less than one in a thousand.

Ye. I was going to be smug about 1/1000 being less then 1/250, but then I realized that start-ups with great outlock are probably harder to get into.

> If 1 out of 250 ends up being a $100B company, 0.25% of equity you earn per year is $1M in cash. Try to beat that working at Facebook.

Let's say it takes 10 years for the unicorn to reach $100B and you've accumulated 0.25% equity per year for those 10 years (unlikely that you finish with 2.5% fully-diluted unless you were a founder, but let's go with it anyway). $250M cash after 10 years, but there is a 1/250 chance of this being the case, so the expected value of the $250M is (1/250 * $250M) = $1M = $100k/year over the ten years. Let's see if Facebook can beat that:

Even if you're E4 at Facebook for the whole 10 years (not even career level), you would average $264k/year, which is a guaranteed $2.64M over 10 years, excluding stock growth and promotions. Average E5 jumps to $385k/year. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En.... So even the E4 option beats the expected value quite nicely, excluding promotions and stock growth (assuming the startup pays you less than $164k/year, which it likely will).

There are plenty of reasons to work at a startup, but given the choice between a top 5 tech company and a startup, you will 99.99999% of the time not make more money at the startup.

(Edited to fix math)

Your math is wrong:

* 0.25% of 100B is 250M, not 10M.

* 2.5% of 100B is 2.5B.

OP's math, if you believe the assumptions, was right. Of course, the value of money goes down over time, since there's less time to spend it. I would rather have 10M at age 25 than 10B at age 80. One of the downsides of startups is you need to go through a few before you get to a successful exit, and as you point out, unicorn exits take a decade. 250 startups to wealth would mean you'd be wealthy long after you were dead. I'm not sure it's 250 startups, but it's also usually not 1.

OP was wrong about Facebook having a hard time beating 1M per year. I know plenty of people at FAANG above that. It's competitive but not impossible.

As for me, I'm making a modest salary (less than you make, most likely) at a job where I'm having the time of my life. I do impactful, meaningful, interesting things with all of my life. It's hard to beat that. Money is a means to an end, and if you're already there, it's not rational to optimize for wealth.

The only downside is possibility of loss of job, but if my job had the equivalent of tenure (e.g. I could keep doing this for the rest of my life), I wouldn't worry about money at all. But money has risks too.

>OP was wrong about Facebook having a hard time beating 1M per year. I know plenty of people at FAANG above that. It's competitive but not impossible.

You are correct. In my 22+ year career, 17 of them were spent at startups, including a stint as VP Eng at the last one. Two of those were acquired (including the VP Eng role) and one is still going strong. This year at FB, I'll be paid the equivalent of what I was paid in my last 4 startup years combined, INCLUDING my proceeds from my company being acquired.

It's a totally different world though. Once I have enough saved to handle college and retirement, I fully expect to go back to the energy, excitement, and sense of common purpose of startup life.

FYI: Big companies which aren't Facebook can have energy, excitement, and sense-of-common-purpose. It's less common than in the sixties, when companies like HP were like families, but companies like that still do exist.

Totally agree, but my anecdotal experience is that I've felt those things at all three startups and none of the six big companies I've been at. It exists in BigCo land, but I think it's a little harder to find.

> OP was wrong about Facebook having a hard time beating 1M per year. I know plenty of people at FAANG above that. It's competitive but not impossible. It's competitive but not impossible.

What are the chances that a person reaches that kind of salary? And how does it compare to chances of person making it big in startups? I don't know, because I don't have the data, but intuitively I think the chances and expected value for both is pretty close.

E.g if you're a smart person and a good engineer you're likely to land a good paying FAANG job or become an early employee at a hot startup.

oops you are correct, I misread OPs message.

I would say 0.25% equity is possible at exit, if you started very early and the founders were kind with dilution/top-ups (which is unfortunately not very common). Then I would still stand by everything I wrote.

> I love small companies, I love the chaos, [...]

I agree with the gist of the whole sentence and I feel the same, but I wouldn't necessarily connect small company with chaos. I've seen order and discipline in small companies and enough chaos in big corp. If anything I'd consider company size and order/chaos relatively independent dimensions.