The article is not about early stage companies though: If a company has 20 employees, yes, chances are that the value is zero. But imagine you are joining one of those companies that aren't public, and have a large paper valuation: hundreds, if not thousands of employees, plenty of brand recognition and all that. Chances are that you are still paid in a way that resembles what Google or Facebook do, except instead of RSUs for a company that is publicly traded, you will probably get options, instead of a 100K+ salary premium over working at Google.

So that's the question you have to think about: Is it really sane to think that, say, two million bucks of Palantir options are worth exactly as much as what you get by joining a tiny 10 person startup that a very uncertain future and a far lower ceiling? Would RSUs with a dual trigger also be worth zero?

If this is really the case, everyone joining one of those companies is certifiably insane, because life is not that different from a bigger tech company, the hiring bar is not any lower, and in a publicly traded tech company, stock compensation is often quite large and very real. If that's not the case, then we need to understand those options a lot better than we do in tiny companies, and understand what happens if our stay is just a few years, while the company will remain private for longer, precisely because we expect the company to IPO at some point, making the options be worth something.