> Is this an unreasonable request from an employee? To put it kindly: if that guy posed the question here from his point of view, very likely the majority opin

> Is this an unreasonable request from an employee? To put it kindly: if that guy posed the question here from his point of view, very likely the majority opinion would be "walk". There's a lot of programming jobs out there that pay more than the minimum wage. Even if you agree with the equity proviso, after 6 months any of these things could happen: * one of the founder leaves and your company stops growing * your company doesn't get the second round of funding right away * you decide the guy isn't performing well enough (I don't know how this would affect his prospects in UK/Germany, but in some places a 6-month stay would affect one's image significantly) * the guy goes well but you decide to hire another person instead of hiring him full time (thereby paying market salary and giving up some equity) * the guy goes well but you decide not to hire him full-time, for any old reason.