Bingo. In my experience, young employees are hoping desperately for a lottery win, because owning their own home some day is starting to seem impossible. They w

Bingo. In my experience, young employees are hoping desperately for a lottery win, because owning their own home some day is starting to seem impossible. They want to believe that the magic beans (pre-IPO options) are real and are usually willing to hang on at a bad job, desperately trying to make it work, because they've spent a year of their life believing that their options would be worth megabucks in 5-8 years. It's extremely difficult to walk away from that. If it is successful, they find out too late that their options aren't worth nearly as much as they'd been led to believe. Older engineers, especially those who already have a home, or have been burned by the dream once or twice, are more likely to think of pre-IPO stock like an actual lottery ticket.