[eddy_chan]

A lot of people who get seduced to work in startupville should heed this guy. The cost is not only the difference in pay for the years you are working in startups but the fact that career progression inside a bigcorp is forgone (and that itself is worth a lot)

[bdamm]

Not really. It's harder to make your talent noticed in a big company. A software engineer's power is in producing software that is unexpectedly useful. In a big company that talent is often crushed under the weight of expected results.

[DanHulton]

I dunno. I haven't met a bigcorp yet (including government) where you couldn't join in the middle of the ladder with a sufficiently impressive resume, and working at interesting startups on tech that a bigcorp might want to use is definitely a way to do so.