why would anyone work in startups as early devs anymore. Tell me what is the upside? There seems to be only downsides.
Startup Fails , you loose - Gets acquired - you loose
What is the motivation to perform .
Not all places with large existing codebases are that bad, but if you are experienced, it can be very personally satisfying doing something well before it has degraded over time.
I have worked in quite a few. One is a household name down here in Australia. I was the first engineer with the two founders. I worked 2 years 24/7 for half the salary I got when I left. I'll never get my money back but that's ok as I loved the time there.
Presumably you have a lot more control and freedom to do things how you want than at a large company with a lot of red tape etc.
That's the main reason I would do it.
On average, startups tend to have a better culture due to the incentives at play compared to big-tech. And that attracts engineers regardless of the comp.
You get to make a nice payout for a VC. And isn't that all of our life goals?