There are good reasons to want to work at a startup. The biggest is that you'll be allowed to get in over your head more so than you will at a more established

There are good reasons to want to work at a startup. The biggest is that you'll be allowed to get in over your head more so than you will at a more established company and putting yourself in sink-or-swim situations is the fastest way to learn to swim, so to speak. After having been through two acquisitions now, I've grown faster during the "whatever it takes" periods than I have in the golden handcuffs times that followed. But the rough formula I've followed is to calculate my "investment" in the company and compare it to the company's other investors. I look at the company's last round and figure out how much the investor(s) paid and what percentage the investor(s) got. Then I can look at the offer and see what percentage I'm getting and work out how much that would have cost in the most recent round. If the salary hit I'm taking is considerably more than that, I either ask for more equity or walk away. If a company won't give me the information necessary to perform this calculation, I walk away. It's not perfect, but it's close enough that I can make a somewhat logical decision and not simply cave in to my preference for working in a startup environment. Investor's shares can be somewhat more valuable due to liquidation preferences and other favorable terms, but employees can also get retention grants if the company is acquired, so I haven't figured out a way to balance those considerations.