Simple bit of math from much earlier in my career:
* Google salary is $180k
* Startup salary is $125k
Expected value of stock options must be >$55k per year to be economically equal. If we assume 5 years to exit, 20% odds of successful exit, and $50 million exit, that means I must own about 3% of the company at the time of exit, assuming I have no risk aversion (and more if I do). Assuming reasonable dilution over the 5 years, I need to get substantially more than 3% today.
In most cases, only founders get that level of equity. The equity offered to future employees is, quite frankly, a complete joke for most startups I've seen. The assumption is that there aren't enough developers who can't value options well that some sucker is gonna get fleeced.
That doesn't make startup the wrong option (I went with it), but the incentives have to be non-financial. Startups can be great or horrible places to learn, depending on how much exposure you have to business processes and similar. In Google, you're in a specialized box. In startups, you can see many more aspects of the operation. Getting into a position with that kind of visibility, however, can be difficult to properly negotiate early in the career.
> Could you attach some numbers to what you consider tiny and adequate equity?
That depends entirely on the company and the developer, there are no absolute numbers. Keep in mind though that often it's entirely fair that even the earliest employees get vastly less than the founders. After all, they probably didn't spend the last three years living in their parents' basement to get the business to the point of being viable for full-time employee #1. E.g. I think it took Kickstarter something like seven years to actually get to launch.
For a typical startup, anything less than 5-10% for a first engineer (non founder) is tiny, negligible, and just not worth suffering (lower salary, lost health, long hours) a startup for. Of course, there are startups that offer decent salaries and normal working hours. They're just rare. In those cases, equity isn't necessarily an issue and even no equity can be just fine.
For me, there's no amount of equity that would be "adequate" - if a company wants to include some in an offer, great, but it's not going to be a factor in my decision.
Most likely the equity will be worth nothing or very little - I thus value it at zero so I'm not willing to give up any amount of salary for it.
I tend to agree with you in that I do not weigh a decision based on the amount of equity they are offering. A little side story as to why I do not weigh equity as I used to. Back in the first bubble (1998-2000) I went to work for a startup that had good leadership, big investors, and really came to define the SaaS model (although we called it an Application Service Provider at the time). I took a slight pay cut to come to work there, but I saw upside and they offered me a great equity package. A year and half down the road we were growing and planning to go public. They had not planned well and given out too much equity. Prior to the IPO we had to do an 8 to 1 reverse split, meaning that for every 8 shares you had you now had 1. Although the IPO was fairly successful out of the gate, moral was destroyed by the reverse split.
However, with that in mind, I will still give up salary in return for equity if I am (a) passionate about the business idea, (b) believe that there is a good chance that the business will succeed, (c) believe in the founders and team that is already in place, including any investors. And looking back (I am in my 40s now) the younger you are the more risk you can absorb in terms of equity. I enjoy the startup world and am willing to take risks. Plus, like any other job if it doesn't look like it is panning out or you are unhappy there is nothing holding you there.
I like equity for what it does to me. It makes me primal and on top of my game. It helps me continue to give a shit. All these things benefit me because instead of wasting time (On HN :P) I am focused on delivering and increasing the leverage of my contributions to my team (ie, Making bigger moves) .
Probably would be better for your career if you learned how to motivate intrinsically, rather than relying on carrots and sticks. At some point the carrot is going to disappear, and you'll realize that the folks holding the stick made off like bandits.
