You're an employee, not a co-owner. You're paid to do a job and, more often than not, your input is completely irrelevant to the leadership.
And as someone who is paid to do a job, not to be a practical co-owner, you should be paid in cash.
I currently work at a 50 people startup... and guess what? I'm no co-owner, no matter how much options I get. Last reorganization was done without my input... and no one will ask in the future. If you think you're anything more than a service provider - you're either in the executive management or deluded.
You’d rather the tech industry work like industries where only founders and executives reap windfalls of exit events? If your reply is that the company can offer bonuses when the exit event happens, (1) most companies don’t do this after the fact but stock is a way to force it to happen and (2) this doesn’t help employees who stayed for many years but didn’t happen to be there at the moment of the exit.
You're an employee, not a co-owner. You're paid to do a job and, more often than not, your input is completely irrelevant to the leadership.
And as someone who is paid to do a job, not to be a practical co-owner, you should be paid in cash.
I currently work at a 50 people startup... and guess what? I'm no co-owner, no matter how much options I get. Last reorganization was done without my input... and no one will ask in the future. If you think you're anything more than a service provider - you're either in the executive management or deluded.