>This is a nice way of saying "will be taken advantage of". Or it's a recognition that if you are serious about growing your career you need to do so by demons

>This is a nice way of saying "will be taken advantage of". Or it's a recognition that if you are serious about growing your career you need to do so by demonstrating you are capable of handling greater levels of responsibility. If you think you are being exploited then don't join the copmany. But the idea that more responsibility means more exploitation and that you don't gain anything from that is incredibly short-sighted. > The issue I have taken with your stance is that it seems to presuppose some business that is automatically a big hit were it not for a potentially terrible hire, instead of a business that won't go anywhere without good execution by a team. I don't agree that's my stance. If you've never run an engineering team and you get an opportunity to do so out a startup that fails, you've still gained from that experience significantly. The company paid a lot of money for you to make mistakes that you wont make when you go on to lead your next team. It's difficult to calculate the value of that, but it's absolutely real and it's why a lot of people transition to smaller companies in order to grow their careers. Early employees (and I am one) are absolutely not later stage cofounders. My suggestion to people who are in a position where they feel like a later stage cofounder without the upside is to leave that position. I'm currently at a company where I absolutely know I could not do what the founder/CEO does, and I don't feel like the deal I got is exploitative at all despite having, of course, significantly less equity than the founder. YMMV. Edit: to further clarify the last point: this company absolutely could have succeeded without me, it could not have succeeded without the founder and a few key hires. If you are joining a typical "lean startup" that is just some engineers who are trying to figure out a business, then yeah, sure, you are a fool to join as an early employee. If you are joining a business with a founder who deeply understands an industry and how to execute, then it's a completely different deal you are signing up for. Apples and oranges.