Equity should not be in lieu of competitive salary, its purpose should be to align the employee with the company's success in the long run. > to be honest I'm

Equity should not be in lieu of competitive salary, its purpose should be to align the employee with the company's success in the long run. > to be honest I'm not really too sad that this culture hasn't really taken hold over here. Most 'old money' in Europe isn't old billionaire heirs anyway but the small and middle-sized business who treat their employees quite well, employ them for decades, don't lay them off at the first sign of trouble and so on. That is increasingly less true for new businesses (although still less arbitrary than the US, although-although some would argue this is a form of agility necessary for startups) and was never due to the kind nature of business owners but due to post-ww2 tradition of worker-friendly politics and regulation backed by strong unions. The "old money" investors do not directly manage the startups any more than silicon valley VCs do theirs.