Yes, because every company that has ever failed was predetermined to be a failure long before they went out of business. Give me a break. I've watched companies of varying sizes do extremely well for several years, which then fall apart into ashes in a matter of a month or two. You can't assign value to options unless you are in the process of cashing them out.
EVERYTHING involves risk. A risk adjusted calculation isn't a guarantee but it's also not irrelevant simply because there's risk.
If I will pay you $1 for every number that comes up on the dice, unless its a 1 in which case I pay you nothing, would you ante up $0.50? You seem to be arguing that because there's a chance a 1 could come up, that a ticket for that game isn't worth $0.50.
Also, your analogy if full of it. You make it sound like options will pay out 5/6ths of the time. Adjust your analogy to rolling a 100,000-sided die with a couple of numbers that pay out, and we might be closer to the reality. With those adjusted numbers, no you cannot have my $0.50.
Better to get the market salary for a 50 hour a week job and do your own startup on the side as a side project.
The thing is, early employees (first 1-4 years) put in as much effort and take as much risk as founders, and take a lot more risk than investors (who can spread their bets over a dozen other investments) yet generally get poor terms in their options packages.
Options do have a calculable value, if you can determine the risk of failure for the company. I think they correct answer is to get RSUs that vest and have the same terms as the investors do. That's a lot more fair- investors still get to spread their bets around and have less risk, but employees have reasonable participation in all outcomes in that case (and the RSUs vest like options would.)