Is Venture Capital Overhyped for Young Professionals?

I agree with all of the points above. I'm in growth but looked at early stage VC and often talk to recruits doing the same. My genuine advice is that a VC junior job is a dead-end 80%+ of the time. Late-stage VC is usually more institutional and offers more optionality but it's also one of the worst performing asset classes of recent years so I doubt many of those funds are hiring. My grievances with early stage are:

• Most of the industry is not at all institutionalized. Plenty of entrepreneurs with 8 or 9 figure exits set up their own funds with a bit of F&F capital because it seems like a fun hobby. Those firms don't offer much in terms of mentorship / learning, career progression, or longevity (i.e. they run out of money and/or can't get externals interested enough to continue)
• There's a huuuuuge power law in venture returns that doesn't exist in other asset classes... both because it's inherently a high beta strategy, but also because you have the low-expertise practitioners above. Fund failure rate is much higher than other asset classes
• Being a venture associate is often a make-work job, especially the earlier stage they invest. There's plenty of funds out there that have like 4-6 partners and only 2-3 junior resources because your investment decision is based more on vibes / following the lead / flavor-of-the-month trend than it is actual DD
• ...but investment decision making is so individualized and qualitative that it's not straightforward to source on your own. In growth you at least have a checklist (i.e. is it this big, growing this fast, this capital efficient...) but in venture you need to be a lot more mentally locked in with your GPs and able to navigate politics
• Exit options within finance are limited if your fund didn't perform (and it probably didn't)because the job doesn't develop hard enough skills. You're most likely heading to a startup in a BizOps role or starting a company yourself
• Pay will be much quite a bit worse than most other areas of finance, think ~120-150k as an associate

If you can join a truly institutional Tier One venture firm with a history of internal promotions to partner (Accel, Lightspeed, Index, etc.) then by all means do it if that's the path you're interested in. But those funds are the very small minority of the industry and the others have most/all of the risks above