I'm starting to feel like the entire equity offering model is broken. While I agree that you should take a job at a startup for reasons intrinsic to the job it

I'm starting to feel like the entire equity offering model is broken. While I agree that you should take a job at a startup for reasons intrinsic to the job itself, and not just the comp (or possible comp) - it is still part of the offer. If someone is offering you a form of compensation, that means you should be able to evaluate it. Otherwise the offer might as well come with a guarantee of two unicorns after four years. Additionally, almost EVERY startup trying to entice people to work for them mentions the equity as part of the sales pitch. "Meaningful equity", "Ownership in the company", "Shares of a pre-IPO company", etc, etc. So if you're pitching people based off of an intangible, almost meaningless number, that smells like a problem, to me. I understand all of the complications, the effect of future rounds being an unknown, etc...but is there a way to improve this? Perhaps if, at the time of offer, and with each change in funding - there was a clearly spelled out, given possible outcome at this time, here's the breakdown of what you get - that could help? I.e., If were were bought out at $100M right now, the founders would receive $12M, and you would end up with $37k...maybe people could evaluate better how "worth it" it is to them. Additionally, when things happen like founders getting cashed out for some sort of comfort effect, like "OK guys, you each at least got a million out of this, run the company now with some security behind you"...employees should be made aware. I guess I just feel like there needs to be more transparency, but I'm not savvy enough to know a good way to offer that.