The amount of chaos depends on the startup's finances, those facing financial troubles are really not a nice place to be whereas those that are well-funded are also chaotic, but in a nice way. So another thing to do before joining an early-stage startup is to do a bit of digging to see what their finances look like.
When a startup is having financial troubles and you can afford the gamble (and you've obviously done your homework to see that they're going to get out of that financial trouble), then there's always the option to negotiate for more shares while taking a pay-cut (long-term, this could mean your time investment gets a much bigger pay-out).
Joining a startup that is having financial trouble could mean you don't get paid for several months whereas a well-established company has much less risk of this happening.
Thanks Syed Fazle Rahman. I'm considering it but for the moment, I prefer having all my content version controlled. Hence, my personal and the company website/blog is hosted via Github + Netlify.
I'm not sure if this is a feature worth solving for a platform like yours. But this sense of control is why I self-host most things and try to amplify the content on various platforms.
Great article, personally I like working with startup because there are a lot of challenges there and you have the opportunity to learn new things. However, some early stage startups nowadays exaggerate when they recruit a new software engineer and sometimes they have a recruitment process like Google or Amazon.
The amount of chaos depends on the startup's finances, those facing financial troubles are really not a nice place to be whereas those that are well-funded are also chaotic, but in a nice way. So another thing to do before joining an early-stage startup is to do a bit of digging to see what their finances look like.
When a startup is having financial troubles and you can afford the gamble (and you've obviously done your homework to see that they're going to get out of that financial trouble), then there's always the option to negotiate for more shares while taking a pay-cut (long-term, this could mean your time investment gets a much bigger pay-out).
Joining a startup that is having financial trouble could mean you don't get paid for several months whereas a well-established company has much less risk of this happening.