Ask HN: Private Company Stock Options

I know little about stock options, and usually people talk a lot about them in the context of publicly-traded companies and being employee number X (where X < 100). In my case, the company I will work for is a private one, and I'm probably employee number 1000, so stock options are really not that of an incentive even though the company advertises them as "perks". I'm really more into negotating a decent base salary.