The worst statistic of all: the vast majority of employees never exercise their stock options. According to this article, less than 5% of employee stock options are ever exercised: https://medium.com/@henrysward/broken-cap-tables-bbf84574a76... Start-ups would love for you to take a lower than market rate salary in exchange for options as the risk is entirely leveraged to the employee.
If you are going to work for a start-up you should never count your options as payment in lieu of salary. They are a lottery ticket and they are no substitute for cold hard cash. There are various other good reasons one might have for joining a start-up, but options should not be one of those reasons.