They are also overestimating the likelihood of hitting the jackpot at a startup.  The d100 rule of thumb guidance is insanely optimistic; there is not anywhere close to a 5% chance that your lottery ticket will be worth life-changing money; it&#x27;s probably 1% at best (and later discussion suggests that 0.5% might be about right).  Nor is there a 30% chance your ticket will be worth anything; 10% is more realistic (ignoring all the ways that your ticket in particular may end up being worthless), and the &quot;anything&quot; is likely to be so small as to be noise relative to a BigCo base salary.  Remember, a general rule of thumb across all industries is that 90% of new ventures fail within 5 years.<p>Of course, given today&#x27;s stock market prices, it&#x27;s likely that any options you get at BigCo will be out of the money when they finally vest, and there&#x27;s a good chance your RSUs will be worth less than you&#x27;re valuing them today.  But the effects of these things are still much smaller than the vastly overstated likelihood of ending up with a winning lottery ticket.