[hiram112]

That's true, but what about the sales guy that takes 5% of a $10 million deal as commission? Or the exec team that gets a 10% cut of the increased profits this year?

There was always a huge amount of players at work helping the upper execs and sales teams, from the devs to HR.

I guess OP's post was and the article itself are noting that working your ass off and making a big contribution in SV as an engineer can sometimes be a bad deal, especially when the engineer in question really is talented.