1. "Potential equity upside" is an illusion. It's better than a lottery ticket, sure, but the vast majority of startups fail, or fail to get big enough for the

1. "Potential equity upside" is an illusion. It's better than a lottery ticket, sure, but the vast majority of startups fail, or fail to get big enough for the equity to be worth much. So might want to reconsider that goal. If you want guaranteed money, Google pay + bonus + equity probably has higher expected value. Or a hedge fund. 2. Personally I want to optimize for working with interesting people I can learn from, working on worthwhile problems. Last round of interviews with startups I met a whole bunch of people who I liked, at multiple companies. 3. I don't know why your experience is so different. Geography? I'm in Boston. The companies you're choosing to interview at? E.g. I tried hard to filter out companies with bad reviews on Glassdoor. My process is written up in blog post, though it doesn't work as well for smaller startups. Nothing super novel, just an attempt to be more efficient at filtering: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont-hate/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont-hate/