Indeed, and even well-funded startups can't afford to burn $400k on a single engineer. They basically have to give out generous equity to compete, but they and

Indeed, and even well-funded startups can't afford to burn $400k on a single engineer. They basically have to give out generous equity to compete, but they and the VCs would rather be greedy and dole out fractions of percents under the cynical misleading pitch that these scraps will be worth millions when the startup exits for billions. To their credit, This scam did work for a while, shortly after a whole lot of early employees really did make millions on generous equity grants at early startups like Google. Being an "early employee" means nothing now. You get the token 0.01% bottom-preference shares that will net you 0 in almost every imaginable scenario, and somehow this is supposed to cover the 200-300k/yr difference you'd get at a profitable established company.