> The fact that start-up payoff is even remotely equivalent to big company salaries tells me start-ups are a great choice if you value things like your happines

> The fact that start-up payoff is even remotely equivalent to big company salaries tells me start-ups are a great choice if you value things like your happiness, sense of accomplishment, self-esteem, impact on the world, etc. I can tell the CTO I'd like something to change and one of these things happens: 1) I'll get a pay raise and/or more PTO. 2) What I'm not happy about will change. > The thing is though, no matter where you work, as a professional you'll spend 50+ hours a week working. I work 40 hours a week. I get paid more than a startup would pay me. > You could work at a large soul destroying company that MUST pay you more because you have to put up with their BS, or you could work at a small company where you can look the founder in the eye and tell him or her to change something you don't like. That is true of small-to-medium sized businesses with a reasonable C-Suite. This has nothing to do with startups and pretending it does perpetuates the myth that startups are different in ways they are completely identical to other businesses. > The fact that start-up payoff is even remotely equivalent to big company salaries tells me start-ups are a great choice if you value things like your happiness, sense of accomplishment, self-esteem, impact on the world, etc. I've designed and built systems that I'm as happy with as I would be at literally any other business. Really all of you've done is generalized a "bad employer" into "all large companies". This simply isn't true.