> "Is it only in the big tech companies that engineers get a decent life and good pay?" No, author's case is severely overstated. In my experience startup job

> "Is it only in the big tech companies that engineers get a decent life and good pay?" No, author's case is severely overstated. In my experience startup jobs in SF/SV/NYC pay as much as, if not more than most big tech company jobs. The notable exceptions are Google and Facebook, where the compensation and stock is extremely good and generally ahead of the rest of the pack. Which isn't to say that author's complaints about crappy startup jobs are false, but rather that they're really not unique to startups at all - they're common across all tech jobs, regardless of company size. In reality there are three classes of tech jobs: 1 - Near-perfection. Great opportunities for advancement, great pay, great benefits, great work/life balance. 2 - Somewhat a pack of lies. You'll either work too much, get paid too little, get to fight management all day, have little room to grow, or some combination thereof. 3 - Complete pack of lies. Deranged management, just complete rubbish. Most tech companies, even big ones, fall into the second and third categories. I think author is extrapolating a bit from the presence of Google in his seeming belief that most big tech companies are great places to work. They are not. Case in point: > "You can learn more by being in a company that offers reasonable hours while you can have a side project. An open source project, a small app, something your parents can use, anything that you either enjoy, try to make it big, or just make the world a better place." Most big companies aren't like this. In fact, I can count the number of such companies I know on a single hand and have a finger or two left over. Most startups aren't either, so more accurately most software jobs aren't like this. The blog post seems to be a lament about the shitty quality of startup jobs, but really it's more accurately a lament about the shitty quality of software jobs in general. He wants startups to have good compensation, good environments, and reasonable hours - but most big companies can't pull this off either. Big Corporate software jobs are infamous for low compensation, infamous for being middle-management-infested hellholes, and just as willing to bend hacker culture to its own ends.