I was the first engineer at Crittercism/Apteligent which was acquihired by VMWare. I was there for about 5 years before I moved on to Google.
Pros.
* Lots of fun engineering solutions however I wanted to solve the problem. Moved fast.
* Learned tons. Had to touch every part of stack.
* Great culture initially. Everyone was open to helping out as well as going out.
Cons.
* Low pay.
* Growing pains. Visible shift from devs dictating the product to doing mundane things that customers wanted (necessary evil, but obviously less fun).
* Hiring of execs once you get big enough. I was unhappy that I worked there for 4 years but some guy who came in and did nothing got 4x my salary and 100x my stock.
You should never, ever join a startup if your motivation is money. Most of them fail and you end up with nothing (as I did). Even if you're an amazing engineer and think you can push it over the top, you will probably end up as a staff software eng at google in the same amount of time making 500k a year.
The only reason to work at a startup is for the learning and for the fun. You need to leave if you aren't achieving either of those, unless you're certain you will make bank. Don't bother about loyalty to the company because it certainly isn't loyal to you.
Pros.
* Lots of fun engineering solutions however I wanted to solve the problem. Moved fast.
* Learned tons. Had to touch every part of stack.
* Great culture initially. Everyone was open to helping out as well as going out.
Cons.
* Low pay.
* Growing pains. Visible shift from devs dictating the product to doing mundane things that customers wanted (necessary evil, but obviously less fun).
* Hiring of execs once you get big enough. I was unhappy that I worked there for 4 years but some guy who came in and did nothing got 4x my salary and 100x my stock.
You should never, ever join a startup if your motivation is money. Most of them fail and you end up with nothing (as I did). Even if you're an amazing engineer and think you can push it over the top, you will probably end up as a staff software eng at google in the same amount of time making 500k a year.
The only reason to work at a startup is for the learning and for the fun. You need to leave if you aren't achieving either of those, unless you're certain you will make bank. Don't bother about loyalty to the company because it certainly isn't loyal to you.