[sks]

Your point #5 about transparency may not be true all the time. Strict policies force consistency and some level of transparency at big companies while the ad-hoc nature of start ups makes it really easy to hide information. In a badly run startup it doesn't take long for founders/leaders to mislead the engineers with false information.

At a startup my friend worked, he was one of the best engineer on the team and thus the founders wanted him to take on more work in return for a bigger bonus. In the end they did not make enough money to pay the promised bonus .. turned out the founders knew this all along but still kept mentioning the said bonus.