Okay, let me try this again. Forget the money. Forget the job at Microsoft (which was a huge deal back then--Microsoft was the center of the software universe at the time). Consider only this: if you have to walk away, walk away. But be civil about it. That's my point (I said as much in the final paragraph). However satisfying, going out with a "fuck you" is going to cost you. Maybe not money, but relationships, opportunity and reputation. I didn't swallow my pride and eat shit. I made a deliberate decision to value that relationship over my temper. I was lucky (as you say); it paid off. But even if it hadn't, even if the stock had dropped to zero, I still would have felt better about walking away from that relationship like an adult instead of an angry child.

My point stands, regardless of the outcome, though I can see how focusing on the money skewed the story for you.

But when you’ve been treated the way modern startups treat employees, the employer has already communicated to you that they don’t value the relationship, at a deep intrinsic level. They don’t value your basic workplace health (e.g. open plan offices, poor hours, poor insurance), they don’t value your career goals (“sorry you can’t focus on data pipelines like you were told... shrug ... wear many hats”), and so on.

If you find yourself later in life needing a professional assistance from that person who utterly does not value you, this is representing some much more gigantic failure and a worry about having burned a bridge is too insignificant by comparison to care.

Having said that, I don’t care so much about the “fuck you” aspect as much as, say, writing an honest Glassdoor review so that job applicants may avoid falling into their trap, or giving them exactly two weeks’ notice and no more despite whatever circumstances the project is in, and simply not staying in touch with them.

A good way to look at this is as a risk-adjusted return. Anybody can get rich by putting their life savings into crypto or some YOLO far-OTM options play, but that doesn't mean it's a good investment.