Joined a company in 2000, got 14_000 shares at $4.75/share. Company went public that same year, and stock climbed to over $50/share. I was a black box QA Engi

Joined a company in 2000, got 14_000 shares at $4.75/share. Company went public that same year, and stock climbed to over $50/share. I was a black box QA Engineer w/ barely any work experience and I was sitting on ~$750_000 USD of paper money. By the time I started vesting & could sell, the stock price was down to about $12/share, and I started selling everything I had vested. I ended up w/ maybe $25K in cash. A few months later the stock was at $2/share & it never back above my stock price. A few years later I joined a company that gave me about 15_000 options at $7/share. Less than a later, the stock was over $55/share. I made pretty good money on that one.