Yeah, as an "investor" and an employee of several startups, I generally wound up on the losing side of the equation, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.
Stuff that amounted to, "Oh, we extinguished those shares, sorry about that," when the corporation was worth several billion.
This stuff is broken. You are far better off working for a mature company with decent management; if you are any good, you won't necessarily have "fuck you" money at the end of ten years, but you'll probably be ahead by several million dollars, and the value of "several" might be pleasantly surprising.
“Surprising several” is at least 3 million over ten years. Which companies pay to “any good” engineers enough to pocket $300k per year, after tax and living expenses?
there are plenty of senior devs at FANG making that. not just machine learning/data scientist magician but just good devs that have been there for 10 years
You'd have to be making 700k+ a year to be banking 300k after tax. Perhaps the valley slipped away from me but I find it hard to believe that there would be average employees in that range.
I did it at a FANG, and it wasn't 700k/year. Admittedly, this is the longest runup in stocks we've had for some time, but just prudent saving and investing (and possibly working for a FANG outside the valley) did it for me.
Stuff that amounted to, "Oh, we extinguished those shares, sorry about that," when the corporation was worth several billion.
This stuff is broken. You are far better off working for a mature company with decent management; if you are any good, you won't necessarily have "fuck you" money at the end of ten years, but you'll probably be ahead by several million dollars, and the value of "several" might be pleasantly surprising.