There's a meme that's been going around for a while now: you should join a startup because the money is better and the work is more technically interesting. Paul Graham says that the best way to make money is to "start or join a startup", which has been "a reliable way to get rich for hundreds of years", and that you can "compress a career's worth of earnings into a few years". Michael Arrington says that you'll become a part of history. Joel Spolsky says that by joining a big company, you'll en...