I'm interested in hearing the stories of people who had the opportunity to work for companies that are well known before they became well known (and it was less obvious they would become well known).
You decided not to take the opportunity. What was your reason?
They break laws because they're the visionaries and laws are slow. They lie and cheat because everyone fakes it before they make it. Employees are paid low because they're not the ones taking the risk, in fact they invested in you. It's a privilege to be working for them!
People try to emulate them because they succeeded. I think it's just important to make sure companies like them don't succeed. I'll be happy to join any number of companies that died trying to make an honest living and treating their customers and partners well.
You don’t decline a “well known company before it was well known”. At the time, you’re declining an unknown company. Unknown companies are inherently riskier than established companies. Established companies are almost always messier, less organized, and less impressive when they were young.
The funding environment has also changed substantially over the last decade. In the past, working for an unknown startup didn’t automatically mean market rate salary plus lucrative options. It was common for startups to pay people a lot less than big companies because they just didn’t have the money.
They've now got 400ish engineers and are worth over 1bn at the latest valuation. I'd probably still consider working there now.