This article just doesn't sound right. YC has much higher success than most VCs. But even if you weren't doing your startup at YC, I still feel it's far better

This article just doesn't sound right. YC has much higher success than most VCs. But even if you weren't doing your startup at YC, I still feel it's far better thing than having a corporate tech job (let alone pseudo-tech job in finance). The thing is that, you choose what you want to do. Even if you choose selling newspaper, its better than a random "manager" with half the competency telling you to fix a random bug in some product you didn't even cared before. You setup your own culture. If you don't like meetings, you don't do it. If you like blasting music and have grill in your office, go ahead. Above all, startups in SV is something that doesn't have downside to people coming out of college. Even with miserable failures, you would be most likely get aqui-hired with 3-5X better pay package than someone who had worked for a decade in that same company. However I totally discourage people dropping out of school to do startup. I get truly disgusted when people suggest that option. As Guy Kawasaki used to say, stay in school as long as you possibly can. Rest of your life is very likely going to be in one job or another unless you hit a lottery.