Lots of pros and cons, but those mostly reflect on myself. Coming out of college in '11, I had spent the past few years of my degree on HN constantly, very eager to work for a startup. Ended up working for a couple ones which went belly up pretty quickly, and quickly learned some life skills flavored cynicism. Tried my hand at cofounding a startup, got screwed over by my cofounder right as we were about to close our $1M seed, went into a spiral of depression. Realized that I was not the first or last person this happened to, and found the strength to ask for help, lawyer up, find a new job, etc. At that point, I was still only a year and a half out of college.
After that point, I began to work at funded, solvent mid sized firms for the past few years with increasingly higher amounts of salary and responsibility. It's now more than a couple years later, and although I've still got complaints with my current job situation, I've built up the skills to find a new job that will make me happier, the perspective to appreciate the journey I've been on in my past few, and savings to buffet some changes. At some point, I'm sure I'm going to try and take a side project full-time, but in the meantime, I'm pretty content making my career changes at my own pace, with my own agency, and with gradual results I'm happy with.
HN has provided a great forum to allow me to break through the reality distortion fields so common on the job (especially at startups) and make sane, levelheaded decisions. Lots of folks here have made the journey from student to engineer to founder, and I hope to one day join them! I'm beyond excited for when the right time comes for me to begin the next phase of my journey bootstrapping a lifestyle venture. It's one of the main things that keeps me going during shitty days at work, honestly.