I'm not sure this is true. There is lots of sage advice out there pointing out what seems obvious to older, more jaded folks, which is that unless you are an actual founder, you'll probably not make too much money even on a successful exit. The information is certainly out there. It is mentioned on HN a lot.
But on the inside of these places you tend to have a lot of people at the founder level who speak about how well off everyone is going to be when the business really hits it big, and this type of talk can be pervasive to the point of almost being cultish. It becomes the go-to pep talk when the going is tough -- "Sure we're working 90 hours a week, but just think how great it is going to be when we all have Lambos in the parking lot!" And I do think a lot of younger folks who are less experienced with the game do tend to believe the bullshit even if all available data (save for ridiculous outliers like Google) states otherwise. When you're inside an echo chamber, it is really hard not to start believing what everyone is echoing, even if it seems obviously wrong to objective bystanders.
As far as the founders go, I think in some cases they are just being purely manipulative, and in other cases they aren't but are just naive themselves and not really thinking about the enormous drop in EV you can expect when you are a common share pleb.
>I'm not sure this is true. There is lots of sage advice out there pointing out what seems obvious to older, more jaded folks, which is that unless you are an actual founder, you'll probably not make too much money even on a successful exit. The information is certainly out there. It is mentioned on HN a lot.
What are you disagreeing with? I said that people know that startups don't on average pay more than big companies.
Most people I know who have considered the start-up option want the start-up experience for its own sake, not because they expect big financial gains.
I am disagreeing with the idea that the rank and file (primarily young) employees really understand that they are almost certainly going to make less money than they would working at a big company.
Anecdotal evidence on both sides, but most people I know who have actually gone into very early stage contemporary startups as non-founders were convinced (primarily by being sweet-talked by the founders and money people) that the company they were working for was going to be "the next big thing", and that is already a bad assumption for any startup. But the worse misconception is that even if the startup defies the odds and is quite successful, most younger non-experienced folk remain under the impression that because they were given "1%" of the company to sign-up (at the time when they actually signed up), if the company exits at say $100,000,000 ("real" money but kind of chump change in the days of Instatumblrgram) they will see $1,000,000... which is... not going to happen, not even close. By the time they are fully vested and the company exits, their 1% is probably more like 0.01% or worse. The realities of things like dilution of common stock are obvious to people who live on the money side of the startup world, but not so obvious (in my anecdotal experience) to the heads-down techie types who haven't yet been burned by it.
But on the inside of these places you tend to have a lot of people at the founder level who speak about how well off everyone is going to be when the business really hits it big, and this type of talk can be pervasive to the point of almost being cultish. It becomes the go-to pep talk when the going is tough -- "Sure we're working 90 hours a week, but just think how great it is going to be when we all have Lambos in the parking lot!" And I do think a lot of younger folks who are less experienced with the game do tend to believe the bullshit even if all available data (save for ridiculous outliers like Google) states otherwise. When you're inside an echo chamber, it is really hard not to start believing what everyone is echoing, even if it seems obviously wrong to objective bystanders.
As far as the founders go, I think in some cases they are just being purely manipulative, and in other cases they aren't but are just naive themselves and not really thinking about the enormous drop in EV you can expect when you are a common share pleb.