[blackeyeblitzar]

I definitely agree that options are not worth much at pre public companies, unless it is a very obvious case of a runaway success (like OpenAI or whatever). It’s not just that the valuations can be misleading (look at 2021 peak valuations), but also that the company’s leadership (CEO and board) can do all kinds of things that affects the employee’s actual value in those options without any transparency or input from employees. Like they could issue many options and dilute existing owners. They could take on new funding with bad terms like liquidation preferences or whatever. They can choose whether to provide liquidity (through an IPO or secondary) or just stay private for as long as they want. They can choose to expire your options after you leave. The fine print in the agreements that come with most offers of employment and stock option grants give those companies lots of freedom and give employees almost nothing.

It’s not just that the chance of success for a startup is low. That alone would make it a lottery ticket. But it’s also that you have to rely on trusting a small group of people that are usually not at all transparent and usually not deserving of trust either. They can screw you over even if the company is successful - which is exactly what happened in many prominent cases like Skype’s acquisition. This needs to change, and the reason it hasn’t is because employees who don’t know any better keep agreeing to work at these companies under abusive terms. Instead, they should start rejecting these companies until the norm is to have fair employee-friendly terms and total transparency around the cap tables, investor agreements, etc.