[nicholasdrake]

a lot of top engineers are understandably going ot be risk-averse about taking low-salary for equity in a company that most likely will not work out... this however is not good for vc firms, because for their investments to work out they need to be able to hire the best hackers (away from places like google and facebook) . this makes me thikn there might be value in vc firms having hackers on their books, hired guns if you will. where the hacker gets a stable income from the vc firm and multiple attempts at joining different start-ups.. across each individual hackers' 2/3 attempts annd the portfolio of hackers,,,, the massive ten million dollar options could be spread around a bit more, to make it more attractive for top hackers to take the risk and join a start-up

crucially this would also allow investors to take some of the sunk cost risk out of funding a start-up which is the employees wages..

[taude]

I'm not convinced that top-funded tech companies don't still pay great salaries AND give a small smattering of stock options....to keep the employees motivated and to attract the level of talent they need to succeed.

[nicholasdrake]

yeah it's difficult to tell... the narrative from all the vcs is it's all about the team, pg even goes as far to say that if you choose good people even if they initially have a bad idea they'll pivot out of it... but given the high percentage of start-ups that fail would seem to suggest that a lot of 'teams aren't up to it' i.e. there is a lack of talent going into start-ups... if that's the case it doesn't seem unreasonable to think some of that talent might be in big lucrative jobs at established technology companies