[rianjs]

> Some people might do better (even financially) staying at more stable companies.

I would venture to say that MOST people will do better financially if they stay at a large, established company. A new grad might think their 0.05% equity stake will make them rich, but most startups fail, and even the ones that don't are rarely homeruns. Established companies with deep pockets often pay better, and grant their employees RSUs. RSUs are much easier to cash out if the company is publicly traded.

I was recently granted a non-trivial pile of RSUs. Enough for a down-payment on a house in the Boston area. That's better than I'm going to do with 99% of startups, and my salary is reflective of a mature company with deep pockets. (Another thing startups often lack.) In many ways it's the best of both worlds. And if I leave? It'll be for another large company (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.) that'll make me whole for anything I leave unvested on the table. Good luck with that at a startup--liquidity matters.

I'm not alone -- I have friends at Apple and Google. Their RSUs vesting layers are crazy. For one friend, it's 70% of his gross salary, and he's not what we would call "senior management". He'd be stupid to join a startup.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Getting hired by Google / Apple / Facebook isn't exactly easy.

If you don't have the required credentials, getting into the startup world suddenly seems more appealing I think.

[frankchn]

Yes, but we are talking about MIT students. It shouldn't be too hard for them to get hired by one of the big 4 or 5 companies.

[vasilipupkin]

well, to be fair, we are talking about those people who are willing to trade off security for a chance of building something great and a small chance of a huge payoff. Not everyone is suited for this sort of thing. But even among those who are, I think they would benefit from working for a big co for some amount of time before embarking on their startup venture

[rianjs]

> we are talking about those people who are willing to trade off security for a chance of building something great

I object to your phrasing (though not your thesis), because it's the type of phrasing used for other forms of hero worship: police, firefighters, military personnel, etc. It's the kind of wording used by star-struck wannabes, to be frank.

I also object to your use of "great", because I think that--with few exceptions--most startups aren't working on stuff that'll make the world a better place. Most startups work on stuff that'll get funded; that means you see lots of largely similar companies in startupland. (I suspect a contributing factor is also the relative lack of life experience of a lot of these founders: they simply haven't seen enough of the world to be more imaginative[1].) And that generally isn't stuff that will make the world better, because those kinds of problems are hard, and often require lots of financial and non-financial capital to work, even if at the end of the day, there's a lot of money to be made for the players that are successful.

> Not everyone is suited for this sort of thing

Normative phrasing aside, there're equally-valid alternative explanations: not everyone believes they are a beautiful and unique snowflake. Or, gambling is more fun when done at a casino. :)

[1] You alluded to a phenomenon in your other comment, about younger people not knowing how to tackle a problem they might encounter if they worked for a big company. I suspect that's more a function of lack of experience in that they couldn't even imagine the problem unless they'd worked in an environment where it would arise. I suspect this is why you see relatively few enterprise-y, B2B startups, despite the untapped goldmines in that space.

[vasilipupkin]

I understand what you are saying, but Sam Altman wasn't talking just to a general audience. He was talking to MIT students in this case. So, that's a collection of probably highly capable, hard working and intelligent individuals - and some of them will go on to build great things. So, while it sounds gooey, it's probably not terribly off the mark. In any case, you and I are in agreement on the main point here. Big Cos offer highly valuable experience