Would have to disagree on everyone being focused on the stock option lottery. 1st its not a lottery. You can do analysis that shows that working for large entre

Would have to disagree on everyone being focused on the stock option lottery. 1st its not a lottery. You can do analysis that shows that working for large entrenched dominate company, think Apple, Google or such over 5 years will beat a engineer joining a series B,C company that makes it. For startups there is often a trade of salary for ownership. If you calculate it over many years and payrises, bonus's etc... the numbers may play even. Many many people in the Bay Area are not in startups at all and not playing the option lottery, they are married with children. Some play the management ranks and others contract, etc... I met a woman once in the dot com boom that confided in me that she made $1mill in 2000 over a short time. It got me thinking about the real equations at work. You need to do math, simple math but you need the data which you may not have. Anyhow, that said, it is true I think that engineers do not get their fair share of equity many times in companies even with dozens of people. So this is when ownership or foundership or close to starting is a stock option play. Options are a contract to own at a price set on the contract. If the price rises dramatically you have a massive amount of capital. Stock options are very risky, compared to straight risk adverse salary jobs. For risk there is reward. It has not much to do with lottery, manly with risk and reward and statistics. You need to crunch the numbers and consider risk and then decide on your career paths.