[ForHackernews]

I think the point is that for most employees, there is no chance of a "big payoff" (where "big" = 10X what you'd have made at an established company paying market wages).

In theory I own 1% of a startup worth $10m, but that will likely get diluted further and come to nothing. Even if it doesn't, I could have easily made an extra $100,000 over 3 or 4 years by just getting higher paying jobs at a regular company. And 1% is very high for employees, most of whom have a lot less equity.

The point is unless the startup becomes bigger than Google, most employees will lose out financially vs. working for a BigCorp.