[vishnugupta]

> The challenge is that to successfully cash out, ALL the pieces of the company have to work together and effectively to some degree.

In theory, yes. However if you look at Google and FB a lion's share of their revenue is through ads. Yet they employ thousands of engineers and pay them extremely handsomly to chase all sorts of projects and moonshots most of which are inconsequential.

My favourite hypothesis is that they keep the smartest engineers hand-cuffed in gold and ask them to dig-a-hole-fill-a-hole just so that they don't go somewhere else to build a competing product. They succeed by and large. In India for instance a small/medium startup has no chance in hell to match Google's total comp, let alone other perks. Not only is cash and RSU handsome but also they get yearly RSU refreshers. The kind of money Google pays just blows my mind.