Employment is a relation of power. The employer holds the capital and controls the synergy that makes your work valuable - you have limited and fungible human c

Employment is a relation of power. The employer holds the capital and controls the synergy that makes your work valuable - you have limited and fungible human capital required to make their business work. The employer is large and you are a single person, so unless you hold exceptionally critical and rare skills, like say, Michael Jordan at the peak of his abilities, you are quite fungible and hold very little power in this relationship. Any employment contract you can ever sign is with company that needs gritty people. You are not a partner, you hold no capital, you are not a unique snowflake the company values, you are just a cog in a money making machine that needs to work reliably - by easily replacing damaged and worn out cogs. The whole obsession with startups and stock options in them on HN is nothing but the aspiration to reverse this power asymmetry. So that you too can get the power to set the rules of the game, and that others, that you employ, follow your decisions. Money is just another name for power, and the rules of power are the same since the days we started walking on two legs, and probably before that too.