My parents always said videogames were a waste of time, but at least they ingrained the value of repetitive stat grinding.

Not OP but the day startups are no longer viable I will change careers (something I did already in the past, so I know what it entails) rather than grinding leet and trying to find work at some tech mega corp. Salary at the expense of everything else was never the goal.

Same here.

I had a stringent mentality before that I wanted to be an X. Not anymore.

Work needs to have certain things going on, and money beyond an amount is not that of a gamechanger.

I want to do exciting work. Life is too short to work just for money.

on that day there might not be many career options open on the market, though

That might be the best day for starting your own business!

there won't be anyone willing to finance it and there won't be any customers willing to pay money for anything...

There are studies indicating that past a certain level of income, more money doesn't bring more happiness. As a software engineer you can likely hit that threshold fairly easily even at a startup. I'd choose gratifying work at a startup I believe in rather than grind LC so I can work on some shitty adtech that nobody wants any day.

(That is not to say you shouldn't assume your pre-IPO equity to be worth anything though.)

I don’t know OPs location but if they’re in SV - series anything isn’t enough to afford the Bay Area long term unless the wife is working at FAANG.

I presume OP doesn’t live in SV because no way to buy just about any home here on a startup salary. Homes where I am went from $2m to $3m in last couple years. These pillars of dust full of termites somehow managed to get even more insanely expensive. I literally didn’t think it was possible to see a shitbox going for $3m outside of Palo Alto but I was wrong.

OP says he's having fun. I think that's to be prioritized over the better offers, or heck, even the potential downturn that the startup might face itself.

If it were a "I got a job, it's cool." condition, leetcode grinding would've been good advice but he says work is 1000x more exciting so I'm assuming he loves it.

Sure, I'm happy for him, but the company can literally vanish, so I'm just saying to be prepared to interview again :)

Yeah, with recent economic developments, I am a little worried but stock of my previous company is also down. I am hearing rumors of layoffs there. So I could still be laid off even if I had stayed with the big company.

A new goal for myself is to always be interview ready. I ll resume LeetCode pretty soon.

There are plenty of recession resistant software engineering jobs outside of SV. If you have some skills, you'll be fine. When the economy crashes and bitcoin startups go out of business, payday loan startups will be hiring.

Why?

you're probably from the "work harder not smarter" school of thought

And presumably you are from the “stonks only go up” crowd?