I agree. I came across this once, and ran the following model. Assume you assess the expected value of the equity grant to be, let's say, $100k over 4 years.

I agree. I came across this once, and ran the following model. Assume you assess the expected value of the equity grant to be, let's say, $100k over 4 years. Then this means your total comp will rise by $10k a year, which probably is comparable to your natural gain in market value. Thus this is equivalent to taking a similar offer except with $40k in equity with linear vesting, and either getting a raise or switching companies to get the $10k/year raise. What this analysis omits is that the expected value calculation ignores the fact that the equity far exceeding the expected value is correlated with a desire to stay at the company, which makes the backloaded vesting irrelevant. If you interpolate a bit to account for that correlation, I personally started concluding the $100k offer became more like $50-60k, which dropped the offer below market rate and I walked.