> I'm not sure you fully realize what goes into the job.
Can it be a lot worse than working as many hours as possible and burning out? Because startup employees do that, without the compensation the founders get.
My advice would be not to do that. Set firm boundaries when you discuss the role and then enforce them. No employee will ever care as deeply about a company as its founder, and good founders understand that.
To be fair, most startups fail, and the founders of these companies can end up with similar or worse compensation than their employees. Maybe they've volunteered to take a lower salary than their early employee. Maybe because by the time they've started hiring employees, they've been working without any salary at all, burning through their savings and credit cards for a year or more before getting any meaningful funding.
Can it be a lot worse than working as many hours as possible and burning out? Because startup employees do that, without the compensation the founders get.