why would anyone work in startups as early devs anymore. Tell me what is the upside? There seems to be only downsides.
Startup Fails , you loose - Gets acquired - you loose
What is the motivation to perform .
If you want to write new code and have a lot of influence over the overall implementation instead of fixing bugs on a years old steaming pile of tech debt.
Not all places with large existing codebases are that bad, but if you are experienced, it can be very personally satisfying doing something well before it has degraded over time.
I have worked in quite a few. One is a household name down here in Australia. I was the first engineer with the two founders. I worked 2 years 24/7 for half the salary I got when I left. I'll never get my money back but that's ok as I loved the time there.
You can do that at established companies. If the cool thing comes to an end you'll often have a boring job you can keep or stay at while you find something else.
faang has sucked the oxygen in the air. For experienced engineers, the one upside to startups is if you are a founder and you are creating a change you want to see in the world. But this delusion is shattered as time goes by and you realize that you are only a cog in a smaller wheel, whereas, in bigtech you are a cog in a bigger one.
On average, startups tend to have a better culture due to the incentives at play compared to big-tech. And that attracts engineers regardless of the comp.