Going to work somewhere because of the overall expected benefits after many years it will have to you financially, how it will look on your resume, or the "repu

Going to work somewhere because of the overall expected benefits after many years it will have to you financially, how it will look on your resume, or the "reputation" it will give you are all absolutely terrible reasons to do so, if for no other reason that these aspects are horribly difficult to predict and generally speaking are predicated upon tomorrow being like today, which in tech is often the opposite of the truth. Not only that, but these aren't the things that are likely to get you up in the morning. Going to a job you hate because it will look good on your resume after a few years sounds like a special kind of hell. Will you be able to work on problems interesting to you or you think are important, with people you like and enjoy working with? Nobody can answer the question for you but Google and a startup are going to offer wildly different answers to that question. That's the aspect I would focus on. Everyone in this thread who is telling you they can predict the net effect on your finances or your reputation or future career options after a few years give themselves too much credit. And hell, in my own experience going through a failed startup has actually had an equally positive impact on my life as another I co-founded which was more successful. Don't let people fool you into thinking that walking away from a failed startup where you learned and grew as a person is somehow a worse outcome than spending your years in a job that is more "secure" but with a narrower breadth of skill development or ownership over your work.