[wonderthrowaway]

Agreed. View your prospective employer as if you were an investor. Think like Buffett. If your timing is right, a profitable, proven and sustainable business model is worth far more for most than a lottery ticket. Grow rich slowly.

Joined a post-IPO company, saw peers waste options on cars 10K cars that would be $800K homes today, sat tight, did good work, collected equity, which, if spread over my whole career, equates before tax to about 3-4x my average annual salary per annum over a very long, multi-decade career.

It was risky, no doubt. Had I not executed, my cumulative equity might have ended up 1-1.5x salary over a long career. But the downside was incredibly low given the risk taken.

One caveat: since companies IPO so late now, to luck into it like I did, you will likely have to find pre-IPO companies (but post having a non-insane biz model) to achieve similar results.

Happy Hunting.