I think it depends on the person. I have worked on "fun" tech at startups but ended up coming back to my role as a cog in Google's money printing machine (ad pl

I think it depends on the person. I have worked on "fun" tech at startups but ended up coming back to my role as a cog in Google's money printing machine (ad plumbing AND content moderation in fact!) The retention in my group is actually pretty great; it's trivial to have tremendous impact so career progression is fairly easy, and work-life balance is very reasonable. Personally I'm more motivated by this sort of environment and the ability to (slowly) make improvements that affect millions of companies and billions of people, than I am by hacking on greenfield tech that may or may not see users. But I know plenty of people who feel the opposite (as you allude to), and this sort of role wouldn't be a great fit for them.