Early employees take the most risk today
I agree with this.  I work at a well-funded startup, but despite the funding, most of us are working for below market wages.  I'm employee 22 and my options are about 0.02% of outstanding shares.It's disappointing to me to see so much disparity between the compensation for C-level and VP-level versus engineering.  Without engineering, there would be no product to sell and nothing for investors to invest in.  Ideas are nice, but implementation is hard.