[dgreensp]

Well, to put this in the context of the original article, it was actually talking about executive-level positions. To grab some numbers from a random blog post (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/employee-equity-how-much.htm...), a VP Product (or CEO) could be looking at a $175k salary with $87k/year of equity, while an early engineer might make $125k plus $31k/year equity (in his example). The posted article is mainly saying if you're going to settle for "only" the CEO numbers (175+87), rather than true fuck-you money, be sure you're at least meeting lots of VCs and building your network (for a future venture?). I don't think that's most people's take on the matter either.

I agree that very small equity grants don't exactly help engineers pay the bills compared to salary. In fact, small increases in salary seem to confer disproportionate financial and psychology benefits to employees, while stock options are more abstract, and looking to other fields they don't seem necessary to retain skilled professionals. So why not pay engineers with all salary and hold onto the stock? Mainly because start-ups have limited cash too, and equity to give away.

However, at the risk of over-generalizing, I think the competitive job market in the Bay Area means that engineers are paid good salaries plus at least a token amount of stock. For an early employee, it could mean a little icing on the cake, or in the best case significant wealth.