I disagree. Companies make way more money of what they offer. Otherwise they would go bankrupt. They are not a charity. From my experience, from colleagues and

I disagree. Companies make way more money of what they offer. Otherwise they would go bankrupt. They are not a charity. From my experience, from colleagues and friends, equity is worth 100x that of salary, if you know where to "bet" yourself. You can add the option to retire really early with equity as an engineer. One can't with salary before one's 60s. That other engineering fields might be extremely underpriced is a different topic. But that is not true either. But again I am not seeing the salary data that support that argument. Companies either pay for an "average web developer" perhaps with some experience, which is maybe what you are hinting? Or they pay for a specialist or strong generalist that will design a system to ensure they don't lose millions to billions if it goes down. You need to calculate your Shapley value. And that usually in the Bay area says you are vastly underpaid if the stock doesn't pay out. The cash is nothing compared to the value a good engineer could add. Again depends on the specialty. If you are one of the 10-20 people in the world that can build a particular system in production -- my case say -- you are valued differently.