> 3. The illiquid stock options and (potentially) reduced compensation are clearly mentioned in the post. It's no secret that the upside and the downside are bo

> 3. The illiquid stock options and (potentially) reduced compensation are clearly mentioned in the post. It's no secret that the upside and the downside are both magnified for a startup. It's not symmetrical. The downside is much larger for a startup (you can end up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on worthless stock), but the upside is _also_ typically smaller. The 95 percentile startup outcome (say you join a company at series A that ends up worth a billion) is about the median outcome at a bigco. Not to dissuade people from joining startups. They can be a great learning experience, especially if you're self motivated, but financially they're almost always a bad idea unless you're a founder.