I would agree with all of this. I'm a first employee and I have had a huge amount of influence, responsibility, and flexibility over the years— I could easily walk to multiple other opportunities for 1.5-2x salary at this point, and having the option to do that is actually worth more to me than the cash gained from actually doing it. The career growth that has made this possible wouldn't have happened working at BigCo.

As far as I can tell, the biggest issue with most early employees is not being able to exercise your stock options— the ones that vest first you can't afford, and by the time the later ones vest, the tax bill would be too great. So if you want to leave before an exit, you're either walking from your options, bank-financing it, cutting some kind of side deal with a VC to finance it, or working out a deal with the board to buy you out over time.