1. Startups have happiness potential for developer not only because of the monetary wealth but also because of the wealth of the challenges faced. Developers live for tricky puzzles to solve and startups are one place that you can get them. Startups aren't the only place where you can find challenges (as you've noted).
The monetary wealth typically comes from stock options. Stock options are a promise that you can buy stocks at a certain price at some point in the future (when they become available, e.g. during an investment or IPO). Options are how you become an overnight millionaire. Startups aren't the only place where you can earn options.
You'll typically find that companies that aren't publicly traded have stock options (ask about them in your interview). It's not something that's exclusive to startups - I have options in a 10 year old company and have cashed in some of those options.
2. Yes.
3. Accrue wealth like anyone would. Developers earn relatively high salaries (whether they work for a startup or not) and hence have an easier time getting into the situation where money works for them.
However, even one of those developers who earns $1 000 000 can have no wealth if they waste it all. Someone who earns $75 000 can amass a fortune. It all comes down to how well you manage your money. If you do something to get rich quick chances are you are going to end up penniless. It takes time, discipline and a brain.
There is no quick road to material wealth.
Money does not make you happy, it merely multiplies what is already there. It's a catalyst. If you're already happy, money makes you happier. If you're already sad, money will make you miserable.
"Developers live for tricky puzzles to solve and startups are one place that you can get them. Startups aren't the only place where you can find challenges (as you've noted)."
Ehhh. I jumped from research to the startup world, so maybe I have a high bar, but most startups are doing pretty boring, predictable variations on bog-standard systems work. You see this in the way that these "exciting" companies keep re-inventing the same wheels in different languages. How many javascript frameworks are there, again? How many different ways have people found to "replace" relational databases?
If you're right out of school, everything is challenging. Give it a few years. Eventually, it becomes downright boring to watch people needlessly re-solve problems that were solved in the late 1960s because they don't know history, and/or don't want to learn some boring old technology that their older brother used last week.
If you want interesting problems, go into research. If you want to do interesting problems and get paid, go to companies that are large enough to have the resources to fund things that aren't directly on the critical path to profit. Startups are a really bad place to go if you want tricky puzzles.
I realized a) that I was unlikely to get a tenure-track position, and b) that even if I were to get one, I didn't really enjoy the work of a tenure-track professor, which tends to be more about fundraising and having meetings, and less about doing research.
(More flippantly, I realized that the life of a modern, tenured academic looks a lot like the life of a small business owner. So why not just go into startups, where there's a chance of making real money for the lifetime of effort?)
The monetary wealth typically comes from stock options. Stock options are a promise that you can buy stocks at a certain price at some point in the future (when they become available, e.g. during an investment or IPO). Options are how you become an overnight millionaire. Startups aren't the only place where you can earn options.
You'll typically find that companies that aren't publicly traded have stock options (ask about them in your interview). It's not something that's exclusive to startups - I have options in a 10 year old company and have cashed in some of those options.
2. Yes.
3. Accrue wealth like anyone would. Developers earn relatively high salaries (whether they work for a startup or not) and hence have an easier time getting into the situation where money works for them.
However, even one of those developers who earns $1 000 000 can have no wealth if they waste it all. Someone who earns $75 000 can amass a fortune. It all comes down to how well you manage your money. If you do something to get rich quick chances are you are going to end up penniless. It takes time, discipline and a brain.
There is no quick road to material wealth.
Money does not make you happy, it merely multiplies what is already there. It's a catalyst. If you're already happy, money makes you happier. If you're already sad, money will make you miserable.