There are plenty negatives! but such is life when things didn't go your way right? (^_^)
It takes toll psychologically. There's that nagging feeling that "had they listen to me, we wouldn't fail this bad" for a while depending on how slow/fast you can move on.
Wasted [time & money]: you lose money, you lose time. Could've done something else, build a career, street-cred, resume, and do something else as well.
The positive part of working at a failing start-up is about opening your eyes that start-up isn't as glamour as what people perceive it to be. It makes you not wanting to work for a start-up ever again unless it is yours. So I'm not saying it kills your entrepreneurial spirit, but it does kill your youth-risk-taking-high-flying mind.
It might be wasted time & money, but i think most people who are willing to join startups probably believe in the idea and hopefully are passionate about it. Thus they're doing something they love and are hopefully happy, during the time the startup isn't falling apart at least. And also at startups (if run correctly), you can learn a lot in a short amount of time - technical stuff, responsibility, dedication, how to start a company, acquiring users, etc...
Also, you can learn a lot from you failures.
So while you may lose out on time and money, you gain other things too. Depends on if that trade-off is worth it.
I'm not so sure if young people believe in the idea more than they just want to work in a start-up because the media (and HN) have been painting the negative picture of BigCo/establishment and positive, bright, and exciting pictures of start-up.
It's almost as if people will get jeered/booed for working in establish companies.
What do people love? Building software? you can do that anywhere though, doesn't have to be in a start-up. I think people tend to be choosy these days: they want to work in a company that is young, hip, quirky office layout/design, get a lot of attention, and use cutting edge (sometime unproven) technology.
Don't forget that there are plenty people out there that build software on their free-time (i.e.: side projects).
I'm having a little bit difficulty to understand of what you can learn in a short amount of time that you can't outside start-up. If the start-up moves too fast, you're bound to cut some corner, you're bound not to use the best-practices, you're bound to "hacked it up". I think we all have been exposed with the Mythical Man-Month book that explains some of the properties of software.
And if it moves in an even faster speed, I'm not sure how you can learn so much more as you'll get tired and just go to sleep after work.
Yes, you can definitely learn a lot from failures, assuming you know what went wrong. Not a lot of people know what went wrong though. Some people would stick it to "bad luck" as oppose to "we don't have enough skill to pull it off".
There's some truth to the old wisdom of learning from failures, I'm not dismissing any of it. There's that difference between actually experiencing the failure and learning from other people's failure. Sometimes it instils discipline and better work ethic.
It takes toll psychologically. There's that nagging feeling that "had they listen to me, we wouldn't fail this bad" for a while depending on how slow/fast you can move on.
Wasted [time & money]: you lose money, you lose time. Could've done something else, build a career, street-cred, resume, and do something else as well.
The positive part of working at a failing start-up is about opening your eyes that start-up isn't as glamour as what people perceive it to be. It makes you not wanting to work for a start-up ever again unless it is yours. So I'm not saying it kills your entrepreneurial spirit, but it does kill your youth-risk-taking-high-flying mind.