> So if you go to work for a startup, you should demand substantially more money than with an established company.

The problem is that most startups can't match, much less beat, established companies on salary, and they'll just turn you down. It's not even malice or greed on their part, it's just that they have a finite runway and a few tens of thousands of dollars a year on a single person can mean the difference between life and death.

No one wants to say it out loud, but I'm starting to think that the startup economy requires people to accept the gamble of shit salary for a chance at the equity lottery. I decided not to play along with that and only work for megacorps, but it's up to each individual.

The megacorp economy requires people to accept the likelihood of crushing institutionalized misery in exchange for a chance at being able to sustain a high salary long enough that the accumulated pile of cash after you finally quit will allow you to live a good enough life to make up for all that lost time and deferred happiness. I decided not to play along with that and will never again work for a megacorp, because life is short and I want to enjoy mine. It is, as you say, up to each individual!

But then you have kids, and kids require stability. So you go to work for the man, because the kids are more important.

But... start ups still pay engineers salaries that dwarf teachers, retail, and many other industries. Should people in those industries not have kids? Are they being irresponsible by not making 6 figures?

I wasn't talking about money, I was talking about stability.

People working in software field are extraordinary and deserve extraordinary perks is held as self-evident truth in modern world.

Actually, I don't think many people can stop that "institutionalised misery" spilling out into their family life.

Exactly, be miserable so the next generation can do it too! People raise children in total poverty all the time dude, I'm sure you're going to be fine.

> No one wants to say it out loud, but I'm starting to think that the startup economy requires people to accept the gamble of shit salary for a chance at the equity lottery.

Eh, lots of people say exactly this out loud. People who accept that gamble jsut like to pretend their chances are higher than they are and/or it's worth it for the work experience.

There's more to it than the small chance of winning the equity lottery. Working for a startup confers a number of non-monetary benefits that mega-corps don't. If you pay a startup-salary and then stick people in a cubicle and have them write TPS reports and deal with petty politics (ie: mega-corp conditions), people won't work for you.

The feeling of working for a company that will make a dent in the world, so to speak, and that your effort will have tangibly supported creation of said dent is a powerful motivator.

The odds of "making a dent in the world" are pathetically, abysmally, absurdly small. You cannot plan for that. It just happens to some people and that's it.

If by, so to speak, you mean that some dents are bigger than others -- sure... contributing to a small startup that makes some people a decent amount of money and the rest practically nothing... sounds great. Turns out the bigger the exit the less the rest of the people make and the more a small group of people do. Of all the companies big and small that are started around the globe each day, how many have "made a dent in the world?"

It may as well be zero.

If you cannot be motivated internally you're not going to find it very satisfying to continue taking risks working for (or starting) startups. When the first one fails, and the next few, and you never end up making that dent... you're going to be very disappointed.

You can use that same internal motivation at a big-corp as you can working for a start up. Or anywhere else in life.

Yeah that's not gonna happen. Startups are lots of work for low pay, with the lottery ticket that you might be the 1% who makes it out.

You ask for a megacorp salary and you'll be laughed out the door.

How exactly are startups supposed to get the best engineers without paying market rate for labour? Given the emphasis on only hiring rock stars, you would think that startups would offer higher salaries than megacorps. Relying on your prospective employee being too dumb to notice the raw deal that she is getting is not a recipe for hiring good employees.

Work and growth opportunities, the promise of being paid out if it succeeds. At a startup you can play with the latest hot technologies and if the startup is growing fast enough you can accelerate your career into positions faster than a large corporation.