Yes! As an 'old' programmer with a family, I thought long and hard before leaving a stable job and joining a startup. In the end I decided that it was worth it

Yes! As an 'old' programmer with a family, I thought long and hard before leaving a stable job and joining a startup. In the end I decided that it was worth it even if I had to find a new job in two years and ended up somewhere that just 'paid the bills'. In my limited experience, it seems like finding a good startup job in LA depends a lot on your network - e.g. you worked with so-and-so here and they're doing something new and think of you, where my perception of SF/SV is that awesome startup jobs are so plentiful you can't help but have one.