I just did a lot of research into this sort of thing, and thats fairly in line with what you're going to see these days. Being first engineer is going to prett

I just did a lot of research into this sort of thing, and thats fairly in line with what you're going to see these days. Being first engineer is going to pretty much sucks. You don't get founder equity, but you'll deal with most of the same problems. Getting market rate cushions that quite a bit though. In todays environment there is very little risk for a developer doing a startup, if it goes down in flames another job can be picked up the next day. https://www.wealthfront.com/tools/startup-salary-equity-compensation https://www.wealthfront.com/tools/startup-salary-equity-comp... is a nice visualization for funded tech startup equity percentage. Realize that equity is very much a lottery ticket, and with 1% best case scenerio is that you end up making baseball player money for a couple of years when you look back at option value and have some nice incentives to stay on if acquired. Things to ask for: Stock grant, not options. Being first engineer this should be doable and not cost you much in the way of taxes since the company should have almost no value from the IRS point of view. On the chance that you get a good outcome you cut your tax liability roughly in half (US). Single trigger vesting. Usually more for people who will be fired during a sale like marketing, but I see no reason for technical people not to request it. After a change of control you'll be fully vested and free to move on and do something else or free to stay on for proper incentives.