What to consider joining early stage startups

Depends on how "early", but know when you're getting a bad deal. As a general rule of thumb, if you're between employees 1-10, you should be treated like almost like a founder. You should likely only be pursuing that role with the intention of building up a function that will eventually mean you have an entire department running under you, as starting up a function means you are a leader.

Start ups hiring people to be ICs and pay them like ICs (in the form of equity) that early is a bad signal. They should be hiring contractors instead if they need specific work done as an IC.

The first bunch of full time hires are leadership hires. You will wear lots of hats, and do lots of things you wouldn't do as an IC at a typical large company.

Beyond that, you need to be absolutely sure you will mesh with the "founders". You are in essence a founder. You are likely building something that will be foundational to the company. You will be making decisions that will probably live beyond your tenure at the company.

So either you need full autonomy, or you need to know that conflict will be handled properly and your opinion will weigh just as much as the "founders".

I joined an early stage start up once. I was employee number 3. I learned the hard way that just as they do a background checks on you, you need to do background checks on them. I later learned the founder of the company had several personal bankruptcies and DUIs.

This bled over into the company the company was a mess, and ultimately lead to the company going bankrupt. All this could have been avoided by paying $20 to one of those background check websites. In larger companies the inertia of the companies protects the companies from one or two bad actors, but at a small company one bad actor can quickly sink the company.