If only the choices were that simple. Contributing to a start-up and doing cool work is great if the startup does well and some kind of compensation package materializes. If it doesn't then you might very well lose a bunch of time, opportunities and other advantages (hopefully you'll learn a lot, also worth something).
I went through this a whole bunch of times before something finally paid off and there was 0 guarantee that anything ever would pay off.
If you have dependents, a mortgage, responsibilities outside of just yourself and little or no savings to fall back on the risks associated with 'doing cool work' may not outweigh the relative security of doing working for some 'name brand'.
There are intermediate levels of risk as well, and those should definitely not be ruled out, it's also possible to slowly transition from one situation to another without exposing yourself to risks you can't deal with.
> I really like the final line "Finally what do you really care about: name brand or doing cool work?"
That's really a false dichotomy to suggest you can't do "cool work" at a large ("name brand") corporation. Some of the coolest work in technology has been done at extremely large companies (e.g. Google, Apple, IBM, Facebook).
Doing cool work? Many startups want fresh grads to be taping together CRUD apps! MegaCorps will often ask the same of you, but have more paths toward getting deeper into both the product and the stack.
1) There is nothing wrong with taping together CRUD apps if it achieves a goal or makes a big impact for your startup
2) There is a good amount of grads that can't even tap CRUD apps together, let have CS degrees
3) At MegaCorp people are deeply specialized in their roles, its like a assembly line -- you don't get to design the car you screw the bumper on (if that)
Very true and something I feel so many people fail to realize.