Strongly agree from a purely economic perspective! However, founding engineer is a good way to watch the ups and downs of a startup before doing it yourself.

Additionally, since most startups fail, the founding engineer is typically better compensated than the founders. It’s only in the success case that it is a raw deal economically. However, in the rare case that it is a successful company, the founding engineer does alright and then also knows more about how to do it again.

The difference between founding engineer and founder is typically the difference between starting before any money came in or joining after (basically guts/conviction)