> I know that "employees get screwed" is the hn conventional wisdom, but it's generally false.

It's generally true. 90% of start-ups fail within 5 years. If any employee banked on their equity as a form of compensation (which, yes we know you shouldn't, most do as start-ups typically pay below average salaries) it's now gone. Successes are rare.

> Companies like Google and Facebook created thousands of millionaires.

Source? I had heard it was a few dozen at Google and a few hundred at Facebook. Thousands seems a little high but I could be remembering the data wrong.