If you're an engineer in demand, and your startup exits nicely, your equity is still less than the market rate you would've gotten over the years. Less than your 3rd-best offer, for that matter.
Often you can't even know anything whatsoever about your upside and have to take it on faith. Faith! It is increasingly common that, as an employee, you are intentionally given too little information about the equity to know what you would be getting even if you had a crystal ball telling you the price for which the company was eventually going to be sold.
In 2018, because both the salary and the upside are low, working at a startup is in the same bucket as working pro bono, except that it's pro bono founders instead of pro bono publico. But you'll still get a pitch that the upside is big in the event of a nice exit (you just can't be trusted with specifics), and you'll hear a lot of rhetoric about how being scrappy is better than having 18 cafes and 23 massage rooms.
In 2018, unfortunately, it is, in short, a bit of a scam.
If you're an engineer in demand, and your startup exits nicely, your equity is still less than the market rate you would've gotten over the years. Less than your 3rd-best offer, for that matter.
Often you can't even know anything whatsoever about your upside and have to take it on faith. Faith! It is increasingly common that, as an employee, you are intentionally given too little information about the equity to know what you would be getting even if you had a crystal ball telling you the price for which the company was eventually going to be sold.
In 2018, because both the salary and the upside are low, working at a startup is in the same bucket as working pro bono, except that it's pro bono founders instead of pro bono publico. But you'll still get a pitch that the upside is big in the event of a nice exit (you just can't be trusted with specifics), and you'll hear a lot of rhetoric about how being scrappy is better than having 18 cafes and 23 massage rooms.
In 2018, unfortunately, it is, in short, a bit of a scam.
Pros:
Lack of bureaucracy.