Becoming employee number 50 at a company that still has a good chance of failure is the wrong kind of risk. I agree. Actually, those VC darlings aren't likely

Becoming employee number 50 at a company that still has a good chance of failure is the wrong kind of risk. I agree. Actually, those VC darlings aren't likely to fail in the classic, pink-slips-for-all, sense because the VCs have already worked out an emergency acq-hire and a backup emergency acq-hire. They are, however, likely to fail you, which is worse. Now you have to explain a bad separation from a company that still exists and has pump-and-dump VCs and tech press (still in the "pump" phase, obviously) propping up its reputation. If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout trajectory. There are a usually a handful of these at a time, and they are usually identifiable to a smart young person. Citation needed. I'm no longer very young (I'm 30) but I'm quite smart and still 0 for 2 when it comes to picking startups. Incidentally, I don't doubt that I'm better at judging companies than most engineers and VCs; I'm probably above 95th percentile in judgment of talent (judgment of character I could work on) but it's just really hard to forecast startups. Most people who think they can do it, can't. Most people who think they can't do it are right. Also, most of us don't pick from the full space of companies, either. We pick opportunities that make sense in the context of our career stories (career coherency). For example, I'm reaching an age where non-senior/lead roles (except at top AI labs or hedge funds) don't really make sense anymore. If I'm not a strong match (enough to qualify for a senior role) it doesn't make sense for me to apply even if the company looks like a "rocket ship", because a junior role is not acceptable at my stage unless the people are known, world-class entities.