[bradac56]

It's not a "current state of affairs" the industry has been like this for the last 30 years.

There is a difference between a "private" company and a "startup" the problem with startups is they mainly hire younger workers that are willing to take two trigger private stock options that will almost never trigger. Only the equity investors get single trigger options for when the company gets bought by a big player based only on the valuation (that's the end goal of startups 80% of the time).

While a truly private company (think Harbor Freight, etc) will be focused on building the business not the valuation and if they do offer private stock as a cash build it's very limited but single triggered. It's almost always bought back in a buy back so no loss of money typically.

I tend to work in the large corporation side which is a different beast altogether. I did just get bit by a tiny little startup but I knew that was coming from the start. It was an easy 2 year pay-day.