But what advice would you give someone who has an offer from Uber/Airbnb/Dropbox/Pinterest/Palantir? They're derisked to the point where the RSUs/options should

But what advice would you give someone who has an offer from Uber/Airbnb/Dropbox/Pinterest/Palantir? They're derisked to the point where the RSUs/options should have some value, and their offers to employees definitely reflects this. I take issue with this statement. I think there's a confusion here between longevity and future risk. Yes, these companies have been around for a long time. That does not mean that they are low risk. The classic example here is something like Good Technology. It had been around for a while, and it had an extremely high valuation... right up until it didn't, and it was sold to RIM for a fraction of its peak. Or Twitter, for example. It debuted at $45. Now it's at $16. Imagine if a large portion of your compensation had been negotiated at that $45 price. Now that portion of your salary is worth less than half of what you were told it was going to be worth. No, I agree with ChuckMcM. Valuing equity at $0 may seem overly conservative, but you at least have the assurance that you'll never make less money than that. Any positive equity on top is just gravy.