While it's hard to comment on a specific situation, in my experience engineers are typically more interested in cash compensation rather than equity, even with

While it's hard to comment on a specific situation, in my experience engineers are typically more interested in cash compensation rather than equity, even with less than 10 employees. And this is when offering them the option; they just choose the cash most of the time. Meanwhile, the founding team often is just paying themselves stipends for rent. So there's some classic risk tolerance here: if the company fails (which 90% of startups do), the founders have burned all their savings and have skills that are more broad than deep, whereas the employees are better off, and often more hireable given the skills they've developed in their specialization. Also, when things aren't going well for the company, the engineers can put out feelers to leave ship and line up another job, whereas the founders typically have to go down with the ship and shut the entire company down if they are exhausted. Yes, in the small % of cases the company is very successful, the founders will gain more, but it's disingenuous to not consider the risk. Startups are not a risk-adjusted way to maximize earning potential for nearly anybody --- not even VCs! VC returns overall typically are less than S&P500.