> and the options are exposed as worthless at many of these companies, it's going to be much harder for startups to recruit employees with equity compensation,

> and the options are exposed as worthless at many of these companies, it's going to be much harder for startups to recruit employees with equity compensation, which will only make it more difficult to control burn rates. As someone who lived through TechBubble v1: People said exactly the same thing back then. There's always a new batch of graduates with dollar signs in their eyes who believe "it's different this time".