To add some color to my story, I was employee #1 at a startup that got acquired after 2 years and gave me 2 years of rest and vest.

Then engineer #4 at a "hot YC startup" that went from series A to series D in <4 years. my illiquid 18 months of trying to navigate the politics of a hyper-growth company is "worth" significantly more than what I got for 2 years of 9-9/6.

I affected basically zero change there, but by virtue of being early on the rocket, my stock has appreciated massively in value.

I feel more proud of working at the former as I designed and scaled the system from scratch, but would I have been better off doing a hit and run on 2-3 of these "hot" YC companies for a year at a time? Not sure.