I spend a good portion of my time "grabbing coffee" and talking about joining and/or starting startups. My audience is people who aren't yet in startups: they're working in finance or consulting or thinking about working in these fields. They're not working in startups. They're also not - to generalize - from a community in which startups are "what people do."

The point I repeat and repeat is that however risky joining a startup is, joining startups is much less risky.

1. The startup you join might go under, if only because some non-trivial percentage of them do. Startups as a concept can not and will not go under.

2. The startup community understands some companies will fail, and so when one does, their second thought is "let's go hire that company's best engineers/PMs/sales people/recruiters" rather than "well, those people all screwed up. Suckers!" (The first thought is often "that's unfortunate for them.")

3. There's camaraderie among people who have worked at the same startup: if your colleagues halfway liked you, and they landed new jobs, they'll help you get interviews. If they start something new, they might pull you onboard.

4. You're hopefully working in a role or in an area you believe is worthwhile, and you're building domain knowledge. If Facebook falls apart tomorrow, there will still be companies looking for people who can create clean interfaces. Similarly, if Groupon and Living Social go under tomorrow, there will still be demand for folks who've thought about getting local merchants online.

Joining a particular startup is risky; joining startups is much less so.