Yeah, I was young, it was my first real job in the field and I didn't have the experience to do better. It would have been a decent job for the first year or so, just getting my feet wet in real-life work to find a better job afterwards.

But idiot me drank the kool-aid that the owners were talking all day ("It's good that you are here, you'd never make it in a corporation", "Remember all the benefits you have here, like e.g. being able to take vacation on only 1 month's notice", "Corporations are so evil, they'll rip you off" and so on) that I was too afraid to look for something better.

Wasted 7 years there. Then I moved to a corporate job, doubled my salary and have never looked back. Corporate work environments are so, so much better than startups.

I received a few job offers for tech lead at startups and therelike, sometimes even with higher pay than I had at a corporate job, but I'll never ever join one of these mini-dictatorships in a startup again. Just far too much power concentration in a single person.