> “Should I join Microsoft or a startup?”
> "Should I join Microsoft or start a startup"
And as someone who worked for 2 startups, founded one, ended up at a big company, and hope that there will eventually be another startup in my life: I agree with him. I learned a lot working for a big company, and had I known that when I started out, I probably would've been much more effective at evaluating the startup opportunities that were available to me. Having a couple years at Google or Microsoft on your resume doesn't hurt you when you're doing your own thing, and can give you a bunch of experiences that you simply can't get when you're bouncing around between startups.
I would say that if you're looking for technical skills, those max out at about 18 months. If you're looking to develop leadership, sales (as an engineer) or soft skills, plan on staying a minimum of 4 years, because it takes 2 years or so before people recognize that you have the technical skills to be worth listening to, and then another couple years to actually develop the soft skills. Persistence is another hard one: if you're trying to develop persistence, you need to get put on an ambitious project, and then you need to stick it out until the moonshot succeeds, which frequently takes 3ish years. Soft intrapersonal skills like recognizing your own blind spots and learning how to compensate for them are really hard: many people will never develop these skills, but if you do it usually takes being put on a project that's outside of your comfort zone, and then seeking therapy to deal with the anxiety and avoidance this creates, which usually takes all the time required to develop the skills above plus a year or so.
I can see it not being a good idea to start your own startup super early for the reasons the author lists. I don't think there's anything wrong with joining a growing startup early on, though.