This is something that has made me a bit nervous to switch jobs. I don't live on the coasts, so prospects are already a bit more limited. I've spent the past decade more or less on a team of ~5 engineers as part of a ~10 person company.

I did interview at a different startup a couple years ago, which was I think around 100 employees at that point. They claimed to be very lean and quick on their feet, but I got the feeling that we were talking about different levels of volatility.

I suppose the thing that actually keeps me where I am is I have both a very long leash and a high degree of influence. Hard to level-set that against other positions I see listed.