[simsspoons]

Feels like the point is more about risk tolerance - whether someone is willing to accept lucky of the draw vs. “get shafted.” Most startups fail, but to be captain obvious lots of non-founders still get absurdly rich in startups.

[whakim]

I understand that there's a big difference between a guarantee of a relatively small amount of money and a low chance of a huge amount of money even if the expected value of the former is higher. To also state the obvious, lots of people get absurdly rich winning the lottery - but I still wouldn't advocate buying lottery tickets. Startups which ask their employees to sacrifice "financial stability" (author's words) and any semblance of work-life balance seem like lotteries which most people can't afford to play and provide extremely low EV even to those who can. Even if startups can't match bigco perks and compensation, when they ignore the author's advice and pay employees reasonably well/give them a decent work-life balance, they'll be able to attract talented employees for whom the tradeoffs are actually worthwhile.