Coding jobs have about a 2 year half-life. If they have enough funding to pay you for 2 years, regardless of whether or not they succeed, then it is as stable as any job, so just take the paycheck and do the work.
Any job that doesn't have 2 years of reasonable stability need to be evaluated by your passion for the project. Do you want to take on personal risk because you believe in the project? Are you willing to lose money over it? Are you willing to lose time over it, and be broke at the end? Does this project improve the world, and do you want the work to be done even if you do not personally gain from it? Positive answers to those questions may lead you to join up.
But if you join a startup because you hope to get rich from it, you are gambling. There is nothing wrong with that choice, but you should see it for what it is - gambling your time for a small chance at future money.
Coding jobs have about a 2 year half-life. If they have enough funding to pay you for 2 years, regardless of whether or not they succeed, then it is as stable as any job, so just take the paycheck and do the work.
This may be true in SV and a handful of other areas, but it is far from universal.
There are a ton of programming jobs that have a much longer lifetime. There's plenty of "lifers" in the business software or infrastructure software worlds for example.
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Coding jobs have about a 2 year half-life. If they have enough funding to pay you for 2 years, regardless of whether or not they succeed, then it is as stable as any job, so just take the paycheck and do the work.
Any job that doesn't have 2 years of reasonable stability need to be evaluated by your passion for the project. Do you want to take on personal risk because you believe in the project? Are you willing to lose money over it? Are you willing to lose time over it, and be broke at the end? Does this project improve the world, and do you want the work to be done even if you do not personally gain from it? Positive answers to those questions may lead you to join up.
But if you join a startup because you hope to get rich from it, you are gambling. There is nothing wrong with that choice, but you should see it for what it is - gambling your time for a small chance at future money.
This may be true in SV and a handful of other areas, but it is far from universal.
There are a ton of programming jobs that have a much longer lifetime. There's plenty of "lifers" in the business software or infrastructure software worlds for example.
Yes, there are, which is why i used the term "half-life".
But if you are the type to be a lifer at a job, you don't need advice on when to join a startup in the first place.