Employees do have access to an investment to an investment nobody else does.  It&#x27;s just that they need to do due diligence on par with or better than an investor to avoid getting taken advantage of.<p>I&#x27;ve turned down more startup jobs than I can count.  When I interview at a startup, I thoroughly research their market, their competitors, their product, and their business model.  I ask questions about how they came up with the idea, and how they know other people want it, and what questions they asked when they did their market research, and how the idea has evolved in response to new information.  How did the team meet?  What&#x27;s the company culture like, and what do they value?  I ask about financials - are they profitable?  What&#x27;s their runway?  What&#x27;s their revenue and revenue growth rate?  Is it recurring revenue or revenue for one-off contracts?  What&#x27;s their churn rate?  I ask about funding - who is their VC?  How many rounds have they taken, what&#x27;s the preference overhang, how many more do they anticipate taking?  (And then in my head, I&#x27;m running over the financials to see if this squares with their growth &amp; revenue plans.)<p>If they&#x27;re cagey about this, I walk.  Some companies are, and that&#x27;s their right, and I&#x27;m not going to work for them.  Others are very impressed that I&#x27;m doing this level of due diligence, because it shows that I view my time there as an investment, and will invest the same level of diligence and effort into the job itself.<p>Equity compensation itself is not the problem.  Equity itself is great for employees - they have an information advantage over every other shareholder of the company (including the VCs), and if they&#x27;re an early hire, they can have a meaningful effect on the value of that equity.  But to take advantage of this, they need to do due diligence <i>as if they were an investor</i> - they are, after all, they&#x27;re investing their time, which is far more valuable than a VC&#x27;s money.  Equity is much more highly levered than salary - its value depends on how events play out, not just on what you&#x27;ve agreed beforehand - and so you should make sure you have enough information to make a reasonable guess at its value before accepting it.