Honestly if I am going spend my years on building something from scratch and sacrifice so much for its growth, I would like to have some say on its further development and future course and a fair share of its success too (acknowledgement and financial wise). That rarely seems to happen in startups, apart from top engineers and executives. Even if you come up with ideas that transform the company, best you get is some sort of bonus and maybe sth you claim you have done in your next job interviews.

If you want such rewarding stuff then work in the academia for somewhat a better salary and much more freedom and ownership of projects you develop and supervise (even as a postdoc).

I wish you all the luck, but recent trends are that unless you're the founding engineer or close friend of the CEO, then IF the startup makes it (is bought) you'll be left on ice.

Well then that startup will likely move to the next candidate (among hundreds) with their ten stage interview. I can understand owners and leads of startups wanting to work their ass of to lift their company and dreams off the ground. But if they expect a regular employee to do the same for a low salary and barely any extra benefits then they are delusional. If they use sentences like "we are a family", "this is our dream", run.

startup gets you a yacht if you are the lead engineer or the one who starts it. if you are one of the initial employees maybe you get some shares that you can't cash right away and a somewhat a better position and possibly a thanks.

And unless an owner pays me like an owner, I'm not going to give half a shit about the company.

100%

These startup bros got real "I need an army of desperate folks who can be paid in motivational speeches to make my dreams come true because I bring nothing to the table." Energy lol.

Yeah, it was my first real job in the field. It was a hard lesson learned.

Don't give more than what you get paid for. Don't be more loyal than the company is loyal to you.

If you don't get undilutable shares, why on earth would you work for a startup??? Unemployment has been at an all time low for the last what, 20 years? Plenty of jobs out there, the only argument for a startup is the lottery ticket.

Yeah, I was young, it was my first real job in the field and I didn't have the experience to do better. It would have been a decent job for the first year or so, just getting my feet wet in real-life work to find a better job afterwards.

But idiot me drank the kool-aid that the owners were talking all day ("It's good that you are here, you'd never make it in a corporation", "Remember all the benefits you have here, like e.g. being able to take vacation on only 1 month's notice", "Corporations are so evil, they'll rip you off" and so on) that I was too afraid to look for something better.

Wasted 7 years there. Then I moved to a corporate job, doubled my salary and have never looked back. Corporate work environments are so, so much better than startups.

I received a few job offers for tech lead at startups and therelike, sometimes even with higher pay than I had at a corporate job, but I'll never ever join one of these mini-dictatorships in a startup again. Just far too much power concentration in a single person.