But working at FAANG is not much fun. I think a mix of both startups and Big Tech leads to a happy life.

i guess its up to what everyone is looking for.

I personally avoid start-ups like the plague. To the point where i dont even bother accepting linkedin requests from startup people

Im not that big of a fan of "Big Tech" either, i wouldnt go for something like FAANG, even if maybe the pay would be good

What gave me a happy life was "industry" firms. In my case those were either consultancy/strategy firms (MBB/Big4 ) at first, which was stressful, but had good advancement chances (jumping steps based on performance) and very good networking opportunities.

Now i've retreated in "an industry". In my case a forbes 100 company in the automotive sector (they have cloud systems and develop software too). And life is bliss.

What's fun about working at startup that is just cloning a bad old Amazon feature? Besides getting to call yourself a "staff+" on Twitter, I mean.

The meteoric title inflation is definitely interesting. I consistently see people who were Analyst level at Fortune 500s getting up to Director of X in a year or two at startups. Seriously makes me question the quality of people at these places if any random analyst is qualified to be a manager of managers.

Well that's definitely subjective but in terms of Pay and WLB I think big tech beats startups generally

Over a career though you'll be at quite a few of them. Figure 7-10 or more in some cases. Some will be quick fails (within a year you know it's just not going to work and you move on) and others will be OK success (maybe you have an OK exit with equity but not life changing) over 4 years of service and maybe 1 or possibly 2 will be really nice. And if you're really lucky one will be beyond amazing.

Those numbers don’t line up with the actual failure rates though unless you’re joining relatively mature startups.

Correct. I’d suggest series b. Getting past a is a huge leap but you still have risk and upside.

Right but I think even with "Successful" exits your equity will most likely just get you back to level if you had instead spent the time at Google e.g.

Over a 25 year career, possibly. Especially the last 20 years as Google stock has performed so well!

Saying that, I've had some jackpots where there's no way Google compensation would have come close in the same window (couple million a year over a 4 or 5 years, for example). But other periods where it wasn't as good too.

Also, not everyone wants to (or can) work at Google. I personally enjoy building startups and everything that comes with it.