I worked at a smaller startup recently and it was fairly competitive as far as jobs at other businesses in the area. I wasn't making as much as my friends at Ap

I worked at a smaller startup recently and it was fairly competitive as far as jobs at other businesses in the area. I wasn't making as much as my friends at Apple, VMWare, or Google, but I made enough to live comfortably and had stock options that would have started me towards "F-U money" had they gone public. However, that might have something to do with their business model performing very well, and the business being profitable earlier than expected. It all depends.