I believe I read (sorry can't find the study now) that the most lucrative time to join a company is just pre-IPO. You negotiate on salary as if RSUs aren't wort

I believe I read (sorry can't find the study now) that the most lucrative time to join a company is just pre-IPO. You negotiate on salary as if RSUs aren't worth anything, because you can reasonably argue its all on paper. But they will still throw RSUs at you. The downside risk is there, but the reliability of high upside is more reasonable than early startup. I can't say this is the highest expected value, its a reasonably reliable value. It seems that if you have a sense a company has a good chance of successfully IPO'ing, you can maximize negotiation of both RSU and salary at this stage. N=1 but this worked personally for me. I remember reading this a few years back, and negotiating strongly with an offer from Reddit when the tech market was at the bottom. And it did turn out they IPO'd. I did pretty well through that.