I agree percentage of the company is not fully representative of your compensation, but as a single metric it's better than the number of shares granted for non

I agree percentage of the company is not fully representative of your compensation, but as a single metric it's better than the number of shares granted for non-public companies. Ideally, I'd like to know everything -- shares outstanding, shares authorized, cap table, strike price, liquidation preference, etc. But if I can only know one metric, I'd rather know percentage ownership -- from that I can make reasonable guesses about dilution, strike/sale price, etc. For public companies who usually give RSUs (like Google) # of shares are better because you can easily compute expected compensation. Since they are RSUs, you also don't have to worry about strike price. Public companies also publicly disclose how many shares are outstanding. Those metrics are harder to find for private companies.