[patryn20]

Maybe a lot of startups also need to realize that an enthusiastic person with years of experience and an incomplete degree is better than most college graduates with no real-world experience.

Seriously. The amount of degree snobbery in these startups founded by Stanford (and other top-level school) graduates is ridiculous. They are turning down tons of great developers everyday, most likely.

[gyro_robo]

It's one of those silver lining things. You end up doing your own start-up instead, which is usually what you preferred anyway.

I wonder how many top developers are vanishing from the workforce because their start-up succeeded. A year or three of hard work and then retirement.

Or they end up owning/running some other business, where they aren't using their most highly developed skill, programming.

[zeph]

They could also deal with learning that if top hackers wanted to work for mostly equity, they'd be doing their own thing and taking 100%

I'm not saying that equity compensation isn't worth considering, just that for every startup that flips and pays out a nice chunk, there are plenty that don't.