Making a pile of money directly helps your career, because you can choose your opportunities instead of having to take a job that will pay the bills. You can do

Making a pile of money directly helps your career, because you can choose your opportunities instead of having to take a job that will pay the bills. You can do research, work on open-source, join an early-stage company -- whatever you'll learn the most doing. Other than that, I don't think whether you stayed through IPO makes a big difference on your CV.