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I dunno about the amount of risk, but at least the risk is quite well-defined for the employees from the start. You get your salary each month, and maybe someth

• notacoward 11y ago
  Fair enough. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the risks are the same, just that the difference isn't as great as commonly presumed. People still get stars in their eyes about joining NextBigThingCo as an employee. They're aware of the risk that the startup will fail, of course, but they often don't think about the risk that it will succeed and they'll still get squat or that they'll suddenly end up chained to AlreadyBigCo for a few years. Those should be factored in as well.
• rphlx 11y ago
  In my experience talented early employees tend to take a tremendous amount of insufficiently-compensated risk. The founders can of course lay them off at any time, dilute them, give them paychecks that bounce, outsource their jobs after a year or two, sell so much equity that employees stay underwater or barely in the money, etc. The founders take a lot of risk themselves, but they are in control, and they usually reward themselves for it. Whereas volumes could be written about early employees at successful companies who maybe got a solid bay area house downpayment out of their stock options, after working 60+ hours a week for ten years.