Sure, but in that case you won't be receiving potentially-life-changing quantities of stock options, because it's already too close to being a sure thing. You'r

Sure, but in that case you won't be receiving potentially-life-changing quantities of stock options, because it's already too close to being a sure thing. You're only going to strike it rich if you are one of the first handful of employees to receive options at a very early startup which later has a very successful exit, and you simply can't know in advance whether the startup you are thinking about joining will or won't be one of those.