Long time ago, promised 2% of the company with a 5 year cliff, got kicked out a week before cliff ended, company is wildly loved among developers around here too. Lessons learned, perspectives changed.
Nope, I decided not to ruin that company/destroy the project I co-created even if it made me super angry at times.
5 year cliff?? That's not just not market, that's literally unheard of. What was your decision process in agreeing to such a term?
Salary was competitive, work was remote long before it was popular allowing me to travel around the world as I wanted, tech was top notch, I worked on main algos of a cool project and invented a bunch of new ones (friends at Google were jealous mentioning they can't get any such cool project), I could run profitable side-businesses without bosses caring about it if it didn't affect my perf, my work was showcased on HackerNews (once landing #1 spot, so good for self-marketing), just the end left a very sour taste in mouth... Afterwards I completely re-skilled to Machine Learning at three top 10 US schools including Stanford. The main drawback is that I no longer trust any tech company and try to be as independent as I can be.