"A friend grew from junior developer to director of IT at that startup, so there's that aspect as well, though I have also seen a number of startups hire leader

"A friend grew from junior developer to director of IT at that startup, so there's that aspect as well, though I have also seen a number of startups hire leadership outside." This was the main benefit I got from a startup, but that also required winning something of a startup lottery. I was at a company that went from two to 200+ engineers. I was able to grow into the tech lead of the entire thing. That put me into a leadership track at a relatively young age at larger companies. Which has been great. Financially, however, I suspect I would have been better off working at a FAANG from day 1, even being a very early and key employee for a company that exited at 9 figures. Still I now know how fortunate I was. At my current gig we routinely hire startup "tech leads" for non leadership roles. They're probably generally thought of as a tier below a mid level IC coming out of a FAANG company. Startups are a huge gamble. It worked out for me but even the inflated titles are only valuable if the company itself proves to be a winner.