[marssaxman]

I've recently entered the fifth decade of my life, and I actively avoid any company that does not identify as a startup, or which employs more than maybe a hundred people, because I've already wasted too much of my life struggling to do work I don't care about or even believe in, just because some unknown committee of managers in some other part of the megacorporation employing me decided it needed to happen.

I look for small teams, instead, who are hot to try something new, where I can personally accomplish something significant and where I'll have enough breathing room to exercise my own initiative and apply my by-now-considerable experience to the choice of tasks we undertake and the design of the solutions we implement. I won't suffer through any more small-cog-in-a-big-machine experiences, no matter how much money they're offering. Life is too short for that.

Still, I agree with you about the lottery: equity has lost all incentive power, and salary is the only form of compensation I care about. I just see money as a tool for living an enjoyable life, not as an end in itself, and it would take more money than anyone will ever be willing to pay me to make up for the suckage another boring corporate grind would inflict on my quality of life.