[restlessmike]

I think that you are spot on in your analysis. If you work as an employee at a startup and the company isn't a "rocket ship" that is going to go public or be acquired and make all of the early employees wealthy, you are pretty much just helping someone else achieve their dreams. It could still be beneficial for you career-wise as startups give you a lot of leeway to learn new skills and use cool technologies, but the other side is that they can sometimes try to take over your life. They also try to get a discount on salaries by offering stock, which is usually pretty worthless in the final analysis.

I personally freelance full time. Once you establish yourself and get a reputation as someone who can get things done it can be a great career; if you stay pretty busy (last year I was working for probably 9 months, 6 of it onsite someplace and the rest spread out between a few different gigs) you can earn significantly more than at most "real" jobs and have lots of free time to work on your own projects or just go on vacation. I'd definitely recommend moving to someplace with a lot of work to do, such as San Francisco. There is a lot of demand for tech talent here that you can leverage to get the career you want.