The biggest change I’ve seen is how startups are being seen as “risk free”. At my first startup, I was one of the early employees and I had to convince and cajole new grads to join a startup. Everyone wanted to join big tech co. for the job security.
That’s changed now. New grads I’ve hired don’t see a startup as a risk event anymore, but rather, a normal career move.
It also used to be that founders would forego a salary and early employees would assume they would get paid much less than a regular job. Founders were also driven to protect their equity share and would dread dilution.
Of late, I’ve seen founders very eager to secure fat salaries and to get to liquidity events as fast as possible. The earliest startups I worked with, the founders would fret for days about bringing a VC onboard since that meant diluting their holding. Now, founders are driven to raise funding and sell some of their holdings to safeguard their future.
I say all of this without judgment or bias - I truly believe your first priority should be to secure your family’s financial future.
I just feel that the startup world is awash in so much funding (at least before 2022) that the riskiness and “courage” associated with startups - something most early startup essays would talk about endlessly - have been largely negated.