I've been at a few Canadian startups on the tech side, some as lead Architect, and the thing I took away from them is that while they all called themselves tech

I've been at a few Canadian startups on the tech side, some as lead Architect, and the thing I took away from them is that while they all called themselves tech startups, what they really are are sales organizations. In each startup I worked at[1] the sales guys would write deals that were nearly impossible for the tech people to deliver on. And when we did manage to deliver on them, it wasn't a 'win' for us. For one thing it kept us in firefighting mode all the time because we were never given the time to do the job right and and two, it just emboldened the sales guys to write even bigger deals. I burned out so bad from those jobs that I developed some medical issues as a result. I'm mostly ok now, but in my opinion it's not worth it. If you aren't a founder, those options won't ever be worth anything, and you will never get those years back. Even worse, if you burn out too badly, you may end up with permanent health issues. [1] I won't name them cos I have nothing good to say about them. [2] The graphic midway down the article where someone responds to a text about work from bed hit too close to home for me. I can't tell you how many pings I got on slack about some server being down sometimes as the last thing I saw before going to bed, or often as the first thing I saw in the morning.