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Founding engineers are so underpaid relative to founders. I’ve seen it be founding CTO with 40% and founding engineer with 1%. It’s ridiculous and we should not accept it as the standard.

A few good early hires can be just as valuable as good founders.

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Is it? If founders were getting only 10% of ownership which would be further diluted in following funding rounds, how many of them would take the risk of starting a company? On the other hand, if early employees were not getting any equity, how many of them would apply anyway because they need the job / or want to gain experience and build their network with limited risk? (not saying that they should not be getting equity). If 1% seems unfair, they can start their own company, then they would quickly find out that the difficulty / risk / stress / responsibility is an order of magnitude larger and equity reflects that.

Many founding engineers do later start their own company after they see how much of a better deal the founder can get (mentioned in the article).

Foinding engineers that need the job and would take it without any equity aren’t the difference-makers I’m talking about.

Yeah. Founding engineers are drinking the koolaid narrative from the founders. I know I have been in the past.

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