> equity should be an incentive to contribute the the company's success the much bigger motivation is "keep the company afloat so i can keep drawing my salary"

> equity should be an incentive to contribute the the company's success the much bigger motivation is "keep the company afloat so i can keep drawing my salary", so just boring old non-equity paychecks provide plenty of motivation. if you're an employee that thinks your contributions are so great that you are single-handedly juicing the stock price or valuation, you're probably wrong but if not... you should probably take those skills and found your own startup.