Equity is heavily impacted by the state of revenue imo.
If you’re joining as a founding engineer, it’s pretty safe to assume that the “state of revenue” is “zero.”
In my case the business is 3 years old and we're still just the founding team. However, revenue is on a level where we can finance our lives. It would really need to be a heavy hitter for our first employee to get more than 2% equity. I think that's not so unusual, it's just unusual in Silicon Valley.
^ this is typical for US founding engineer
Only 1-2% for employee no 3?
Sadly, yes. Unless you're an actual founder, this is about as good as it typically gets.