I have spend the past 15 years working in early stage startups, and I have never experienced a company with more than 30 people that were not doing annual perfo

I have spend the past 15 years working in early stage startups, and I have never experienced a company with more than 30 people that were not doing annual performance reviews (mostly superficially just to tell investors that they were doing them). So I have to question the validity of your anecdote. And even if you HAVE completely avoided any going-through-the-motions performance reviews, because you're working only for SUPER-early-stage seed round startups, then well... there are plenty of disadvantages to that life too. Not the least of which is that rising interest rates will likely be choking off the 15-year private equity gravy train cycle this year.