This comment might be a bit hard to swallow, I've tried to be polite but the message itself is a difficult one. >I have a drawer full of stock option paperwork

This comment might be a bit hard to swallow, I've tried to be polite but the message itself is a difficult one. >I have a drawer full of stock option paperwork from various start ups I’ve worked with over my career, all of which were “confident” in their growth prospects and none of which exist anymore. >At this point I feel like anyone who chooses stock options over cash is naive, delusional, or misled. First let's assume you're a 10,000x engineer who was also able to change the course of small startups through your personality. Then if this has happened once or twice it might be bad luck. But a drawerful of times, and we should perhaps revisit the assumption that you are a 10,000x engineer who is able to change the course of small startups. Maybe this is about you. You conclude: > I feel like anyone who chooses stock options over cash is naive, delusional, or misled. But there is a hidden assumption there that if you are not a 10,000x engineer, then nobody is. Do you think this is a fair generalization for you to make? If the startups you picked and joined failed is it fair to say had anyone else been the one to pick and join startups (not necessarily the ones you picked and joined) they could fare no better? That you're the best there is, at the task of picking a startup to join and lighting its boosters on fire? Basically it is like dating: if someone says every single person has left them severely disappointed, that says more about them than it does about dating. To stick with the analogy: we know people enter happy successful and long-lived relationships. We know there are successful startups whose destinies early hires helped set. If every one of the ones you've tried with have failed, a drawerful over the course of a career - could this be more about you than them? Are you not perhaps the "truly excellent" husband who has given up on marriage, after 5 divorces. If so, then perhaps it is not fair for you to generalize and say that anyone who gets married is delusional. Because you've been married 5 times, you know how to pick 'em, you know how to make it work: and it just does not work. I tried to be a bit polite but I hope you can see the analogy. I get that it doesn't work for you. But is it really fair to generalize your experience?