1) Leverage (lack thereof): When you work for a larger player, you have established yourself as a person that the firm found acceptable. Having a big name company on your resume means that you were accepted (and lets be honest, for however bad people describe working at a large company, there are enough people who want to work there that it lends credibility). I've had countless offers just handed to me (ie joke interview, sometimes even just offers on the spot) based on pedigree.
Addressing his argument about "cashing in chips", it comes when you decide to start on your own. Just mentioning names of my former employers or work therein automatically confers a sense of legitimacy, and I've noticed that my phone calls are actually returned (try A/B testing this)
2) Cash upfront: The ideal ideal solution is to bootstrap your own startup. Unfortunately that means you need to have enough cash to bootstrap.
To defray the obvious argument, I will break down the chance as follows:
- If you are going into a startup, you are taking the chance that the startup will do sufficiently well that your equity actually has enough value to compensate for the lack of salary (and that's not necessarily within your control)
- If you are going into a company, you are taking the chance that your lifestyle won't scale to meet your income. If it does, you won't have as much flexibility when you do want to do a startup.
The salient point here is that, with a company, the result of the gamble is completely within your powers
3) Relationships: You build relationships with hundreds or thousands of coworkers, on top of the umpteen companies you interact with on a daily basis, who have other skills that may be of help later on. I still call on some former coworkers and others for help with certain things they were strong in, and vice versa. It's hard to build that rolodex at a startup.
I probably could write a point-by-point rebuttal to the original post