> Meanwhile while their first engineering hire, the person who probably wrote half the damn code for years, gets < 1% of the equity and none of the glory.

For whatever it's worth, market comp for Engineer #1 equity is significantly above 1%. Depends on a lot of things (number of founders, how many founders are already technical, whether hire is pre or post PMF, prior experience, etc.) but by and large <1% is not going to be competitive at this level.