I worked in early stage (seed, pre-seed, and series A mostly) startups for 10+ years before finally realizing that the math isn't even close. Now I work at a FA

I worked in early stage (seed, pre-seed, and series A mostly) startups for 10+ years before finally realizing that the math isn't even close. Now I work at a FAANG. In your example, $250k is actually pretty low. An engineer at that level can expect to make $350-$400k, and the RSUs are almost as good as cash. But where it really bites you is, as you mentioned, the opportunity cost. If you're getting 0.3%, you're a fairly early employee. A profitable (for you) acquisition or IPO is 5-10 years away, and that $165k salary is not going to dramatically increase in the meantime. In opportunity cost, you (and I'm being very general here) end up paying $2-5m for the chance of that equity being worth something (consider that your compensation will grow as you become more senior at the Big Tech Company, and that you can invest that money). If you are lucky and have good health, you can make that bet perhaps 4 or 5 times in your life, plus some false starts that fail or become obvious zombies within 3-5 years. To come out on top, you need one of those companies to really knock it out of the park. 1 in 5 startups do not knock it out of the park. And when they do, it's mostly unrelated to the work you're doing - it has a lot more to do with strategy, market conditions, and luck. I like the suggestion someone else referenced. You can angel invest your FAANG cash and get a pretty similar risk/reward to being an early engineer, but without leaving all that money on the table and without the added hours and stress of being an early startup engineer.