[lolinder]

You know your salary before accepting the offer, so if they're that kind of cost control you should have advance warning when they lowball you.

I think the big reason why this is so common is because the type of talent a lot of these startups want to attract is explicitly immature talent. People who are drawn to fluffy perks without realizing that they (a) don't actually benefit from them in any real way and (b) are actually a warning sign of what's to come financially.