I see that no one points this out: Dan Luu and others in this post are using 'Public Company' to refer to only a small high-growth subset of all public companies, namely Google, FB, Netflix, etc. (and perhaps Apple and Microsoft). Most other public companies: track S&P 500 or you joined at a time when your company's growth slowed down to S&P 500 or if you work at a place like IBM that underperforms S&P 500. In these cases, you aren't necessarily assured millions.