I think the other thing to realize is that the change in this "startup calculus" has happened only relatively recently.
The "old" calculus was that, being an early employee in a startup, you'd make less cash money than at a "big corp", but if the company "hit" you'd end up doing much better. Just look at the stories of early Microsoft employees, or the Google chef whose stock options ended up being worth tens of millions. Obviously those are outliers, but it was still common that early employees of "home run" startups would be doing great.
But the thing that really changed the calculus is that the FAANGs started paying extremely well, especially as the value of their RSUs skyrocketed. So the new problem was that even if your startup hit, you'd be doing about as well as a senior engineer who was at Google for 5 years.
I know in the past YC itself has commented about this dynamic, basically arguing that early startup employees deserve more equity.
This is absolutely true. I remember Dan Luu [1] and patio11's [2] blog posts from 9 years ago and 13 years ago respectively, which were widely shared, arguing essentially that you should always prefer to join a FAANG. With FAANGs all downsizing to varying degrees, or at the very least not in growth mode, this advice seems less clear-cut. For better or worse, I think we're starting to see the pendulum swing a bit towards startups with the AI gold rush.
(This is not to imply that compensation is now fair for early startup employees; it's not.)
For me I understand perfectly well that my EV cash-wise is lower working for a startup. I just don’t care past a certain income and working at a startup is more rewarding in other ways.
The "old" calculus was that, being an early employee in a startup, you'd make less cash money than at a "big corp", but if the company "hit" you'd end up doing much better. Just look at the stories of early Microsoft employees, or the Google chef whose stock options ended up being worth tens of millions. Obviously those are outliers, but it was still common that early employees of "home run" startups would be doing great.
But the thing that really changed the calculus is that the FAANGs started paying extremely well, especially as the value of their RSUs skyrocketed. So the new problem was that even if your startup hit, you'd be doing about as well as a senior engineer who was at Google for 5 years.
I know in the past YC itself has commented about this dynamic, basically arguing that early startup employees deserve more equity.