I started software development in startups/innovation teams and this is the reason I am telling younger friends who have yet to graduate to go for the big companies.

Startups are fun. I work at one now. 3/4 software engineering roles I have had have been startups. But all the work I am doing is also very shallow because everything is a fail fast timeboxed sort of thing where you work across a large spectrum of stuff and I will eventually need to change that.