This seems to be less about "tech" compensation than "startup" compensation, on a first reading. The bits about having to wait for liquidity don't apply when working at a public company, and 4 year vesting schedules don't matter very much when you can sell immediately, either. The only factor there is the 1 year cliff, which, for discounting purposes, is not very long relative to the 30 year timespans referenced elsewhere.<p>I'm between the 2 examples: I'm not a 20 year old, and not a 60 year old. I think I would still take the promise of a billion in 30 years, but, only if there were a reasonable floor to that promise. How high the floor would have to be depends on exactly what I'd be required to do to get it. In 30 years, I hope to be a few years into retirement, but still young enough that I'll have a decent amount of life expectancy left to enjoy it.<p>This also means that, although I would be considered a senior engineer by now, I won't be looking to "cure cancer" with a 2 year old startup, as one of the YC job ads on the front page suggests, simply because the risk of joining a 2 year old startup is so high, and won't pay off for such a long time that the future discounted expected return is far, far less than just joining a public company now.
Yeah, what he needs is a liquid market for his stock, but startups are very high risk investments with very uneven returns and time helps provide information on which ones are winners.<p>My early stage startup stock grew 50x by the time the startup was acquired, and nobody is going to give you anything close to the final valuation because the risk is so high. My late stage startup stock in another startp grew 2x in 12 months, which is also an absolutely crazy rate of return. If only I could pick winners like that all the time.<p>Not all startups are winners, but this is basically what every investing forum tells you about retirement savings: you want higher risk investments (stocks) earlier in life when you have time for your investment to recover from a crash, and you want safer investments when you are older.<p>So what if you want cash when you're close to retirement? Go work for a big public tech company and sell your stock every vesting period.