2. No one at that startup is going to teach you how to be a better designer.

Let’s continue…

You will most likely be on a very small team of designers, all of them with the same experience as you. Maybe one will have been there six months longer, which means he’s making more money. And in a world where you have to watch your burn rate, he’s getting laid off first. So he’s not teaching you anything.

You may be looking at Silicon Valley’s new favorite game: Let’s hire 200 designers and see who sticks. Which is not unlike when the sea monkey company would send you a thousand sea monkeys, knowing that 900 would die within the first week.

Or, You may be the only designer on staff. Which means you’re either getting tacked to the marketing team or the dev team. Both of which will see you as a weird “other type” who they’ll use to meet their needs. You’ll be making buttons and display ads.