Working at a startup is overrated, both financially and emotionally
I think this is a really good article, but I think that one of the things it misses is that a huge reason the math works out so badly for startup employees is because founders and VCs take the lion's share of the gains.I mean, in my experience at startups, founders typically own around 40% of the equity. The option pool for all other employees is around 10-20%.Now, I certainly believe startup founders deserve far more equity than anyone else, but this highlights that the risk/reward trade-off really only makes sense for founders. I mean, what founders risk in terms of opportunity costs and lower wages is usually only slightly more than very early stage employees, but their reward is ~10-30x. The reward, in rare cases, may also make sense for C level hires at proven startups that are already growing like gangbusters, because they'll get a ton of equity. For rank-and-file, though, the issue is that even if the startup hits it usually becomes more like a nice bonus than life defining wealth.