[BreakoutList]

Yes. Though part of the crux of this advice is to choose a company that is already growing revenue at a solid rate, from a solid base. This is not as risky as you might think.

Also, generally, if you are a good engineer (as long as you learned things and improved, if you worked at a company that didn't become a big success), Google et al will welcome you back with open arms.

[DavidHm]

I agree with you. Joining a company that has a clear revenue model (or has found a decent way to monetize their user base) and is growing by leaps and bounds seems like an easy bet.

But how many of these companies are out there? Granted, we are a few waves after the deluge of social startups with gigantic user bases and no idea on how to monetize them, but what you describe is still a minority of startups.

And the suggestion doesn't seem to be "join a company that is already doing well", it's "join a startup or create one, instead of going to work for some corporation".

This is what I think: in engineering (and even more, in business), right after your graduation there is this window where you have large and famous companies with deep pockets who are eager to get the cream of the class. If you join them even for an year or two, you have significantly smoothed the rest of your working life.

Sure, you can always join them years later, and you don't need them to succeed - but statistically, the impact of taking advantage of this window cannot be denied.