They're way better than startup-y options, definitely. However if for some reason I don't stay there long enough, it's not at all the same as cash.

They're still plenty valuable, as opposed to startup options which I consider worthless, but my point was that IMO this is one of the sources of all of these debates as to how much people make. Some people will count them and others won't

At Google you wait for a year, and then get stock vesting every month. I just treat it like monthly salary (and don't even pay too much attention to how much unvested stock I theoretically have: if I stay, they'll top it up anyway; if I leave it's gone.)

Yes, totally agree, if you want to compare numbers, you have to agree on what you compare.

In theory, we could just always talk about total compensation, and just plug in standard financial valuation models. (Those models would typically value startup equity at close to zero value---especially the kind of equity that tends to get horribly diluted.)