I think there's a bit of confusion around what market comp is. It doesn't matter that Facebook, Apple, etc. are willing to pay top of market at $500k - while th

I think there's a bit of confusion around what market comp is. It doesn't matter that Facebook, Apple, etc. are willing to pay top of market at $500k - while they're big firms who employ a lot of people, I'd wager they're still not the majority of the labor market. It is also unrealistic to suggest that the "average" engineer has a high chance of being hired there. I suspect true "market" rates are between $120-200k, depending on the seniority of the employee and the stage of the firm. A lot lower once you step away from US Pacific. I think the best reason to be an early employee at a startup is if you plan on founding your own startup one day and want to get some hands-on experience. You won't make the strategic decisions, but you'll have easy access to the founders and will get to learn a lot about how to set up and run a company (both good and bad). So why not just found your own company? Well, here are a few reasons: (a) you need financing but don't know how fundraising works and don't have a network to tap (b) you don't know how sales works (c) you don't have a good co-founder lined up (d) you're still a junior engineer and don't feel confident you could build a product by yourself (e) you haven't found a problem that excites you enough to feel justified working on. I also notice a heavy trend in the comments here towards: employees should be rewarded almost as much as founders. I'm sorry, but no. A good founder will likely have spent years researching and understanding the problem space before finally trying to set up a company for it. They may be paying you with their own money. At the very least they had to starve long enough to raise enough money to pay you. They've taken on pain and risk. If you want to get equity comparable to a founder, go work for a pre-seed startup for free. In other words, if you want founder stakes, go be a founder.