Okay, co-founders sometimes end up with a fair amount money. However, early employees that actually built the company are often forgotten and given a relatively small sum of money. Not sure if SV really changed that.
If you want to make a lot of money you need to take risks. Start your own startup. Go 4+ years without a salary. The co founders might not be the ones actually building the product but they're the ones taking the risk. They're the ones not sleeping at night. Trust me. It's a far better gig to just get paid as an employee than spend years on a startup that eventually fails. If Silicon Valley has done anything it's give young people the false impression that starting a startup is a way to get rich.
Well...it is. In the same way that playing the lottery is a way to get rich. One is much easier than the other.
It can still be worth it to be a startup employee if you can get more responsibility and faster promotions than elsewhere. However, if the startup is one of those that always promotes externally, while the engineers who built the original work get shat on for mistakes made in chasing deadlines-- this is a common anti-pattern-- then you're wasting your time and should bounce as soon as possible.