I'm not saying base salary is not important. It very much is. You need at-least somewhat a comfortable amount where money stops being a major issue. You can pay

I'm not saying base salary is not important. It very much is. You need at-least somewhat a comfortable amount where money stops being a major issue. You can pay mortgage, go for a couple of vacations and have a decent amount in savings. At Microsoft, it would be hard to cross $10m over 5 years, unless you're a really big shot. At a startup that rises to be a deca-unicorn, if you joined 5-7 years ago, that would be possible. Dropbox, AirBnb, Doordash e.t.c probably minted quite a few deca-millionares on their IPOs. Entry level folks would have made that much. That's what I mean by equity and skin in the game. Sure, there is a lot more risk but your upside is also huge. You can see how your work moves top line ARR and incentivizes you to focus on customers and build what they want and will pay for. Sure at GOOG, MSFT, FB e.t.c once you go above senior to staff level, your equity/RSU component starts to be more valuable than the base salary. That's what I mean by skin in the game and proportional rewards. However those rewards can be unproportional once you have a large chain of managers. It incentivizes doing things that lead to climbing ladder rather than doing things that are good for your customers and long term ARR. Sometimes it's related, sometimes not. At a true startup, if it's unrelated the startup dies.