I think many people on HN may be too young to remember the early 2000s, when you’d kill someone for your stock price to be down only 60% over 3 years, but it absolutely happens to good companies too.
We can talk about normal expectations without having to explicitly state that black swan events can happen. If you took a stance of “I’m not going to take any pay in equity because I saw what happened in 2001” you would have left millions of dollars on the table over the last 20 years.
? I’ve been in this industry for…a while. I watched people around me packing up their cubicles in 2001. What is it that you think I am missing? Genuine question because I’m not sure how to interpret your comment at all. Tech stocks have had strong growth as a sector for about 2 decades. Even if they hadn’t, even if they had been flat for 20 years, companies are still paying out $100k+ a year in equity (in addition to base salary).
I thought I was going to be rich with my first job at a startup out of college but the dot com bust basically made it all worthless. Stock is great but cash would have been better.
You aren't guaranteed your salary either though and in many of those cases in the 2000's workers were laid off. Being paid entirely in cash salary doesn't make you immune to market turbulence.
