If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right

If you put in 5 years at Google, Apple, etc. you will find it to be much easier to start (or to get hired at) a start-up than if you had joined a start-up right away. I'm sorry, but this is really bad advice for engineers graduating from MIT in 2015 and predisposed to starting a new company. You have your whole career to settle into a big corporate job for a long stretch; why do that right out of college? An entrepreneurial software engineer graduating from anywhere, let alone MIT, should almost certainly move to San Francisco after college and start or join a startup. If it doesn't work out, they'll find themselves looking for a job in an extremely favorable market. Letting assumptions about what's "easier" cow you into taking some job for five years is no way to live, certainly not for a recent MIT grad with the most highly sought after skill set in the world.