Thanks for the interesting discussion. The only reason why I'm still advocating more equity for early employees is because founders get so much of it. So if an exit were to happen, which could make the founders very rich, the early employee gets nothing. In your case of the default outcome, both get nothing, and that is OK. But if something were to happen, the early employee still gets nothing.
> if an exit were to happen, which could make the founders very rich, the early employee gets nothing
Depends what you mean by "early". The first engineers should be getting 1% or a bit more and getting diluted along the way. This can still be $400k-1M for 4 years of work with a base that is more than enough to "pay the bills".
