[reedf1]

> a start up is a scam that only benefits the founders

I've worked for a few start-ups now from early-stages to IPO and it definitely feels like this. Most opportunities for any amount of valuable equity is complete lies. I have been personally responsible for creating quite a few millionaires - without being one myself.

> I started developing resentment against the entitlement of the software engineers I would hire

You probably know this already - but you are nothing without your engineers and they usually know it. I recently worked for a financial start-up which completely imploded just pre-IPO because the founder thought that they were beyond the point of needing an engineering team (!).

[dlisboa]

I think people today, especially high paid workers, forgot all about class consciousness. People like to think themselves closer to the owners of a company than to the cleaning staff. At the end of the day we're still labour, equity only exists for engineers because we're a high value commodity at this point, but that's not supposed to happen at all. The moment that is no longer true the more we'll look like "regular" workers, with no expectation of a big payout. Just like the line worker at Foxconn isn't getting equity.