Indeed and Facebook can't tell who's going to so they'll pay more the $150k rather than the $1m. Dunno the best strategy if you think you're worth $1m. Probably take the $150k job and jump ship if there seems a great opportunity or if you feel the need. That's kind of what the Whatsapp guys did - they worked as engineers at Yahoo for about nine years before taking a year off and then doing the app stuff.