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It's a good point. But I'm alluding more to budding companies, not established companies. Granted Facebook didn't IPO until 2012.

But, as far as I can tell the software industry has contracted into those big 5 tech firms. The siren call of working at a startup and making it is sounding strident.

Knowing what you know now, what startup, if any, would you have joined 5 years ago?

Would you join any startup now?

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I think it's getting harder and harder to justify. Especially given what mid-career devs at these companies are earning. $150-200k base plus 100k/yr or more in stock after a few years, that's far cry from 90k + 0.1% of some junky seed company with about a 1% chance of IPO.

If you look at my comment history you'll see I've been saying this for a while and I think it'll only get more true with further industry consolidation, which will make it both harder to displace incumbents product-wise, and harder to compete with them salary-wise.

Not everyone joins a start-up to make millions. Some will join just to make a living. There are plenty of startups that can provide a living for a few people with the potential for a bit of nest egg later on. That and the sense of involvement/freedom can be more attractive than a job at big co

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