What I found is that startups have different requirements to big established companies. As the business is not yet stable enough, it's better to write lots of h

What I found is that startups have different requirements to big established companies. As the business is not yet stable enough, it's better to write lots of hacked together lower quality code to get to product-market fit. Experienced programmers can't help too much with that part. But experience helps tremendously when you are working with complex system that needs to be scaled and maintained efficiently. Also as an older person: why work for cheaper in a startup when you can have a higher salary at a big company? You should already know that it's not worth the effort for the stock options for an employee.