I know many early stage employees that achieved significant financial upside by working at early stage startups. Working at an early stage startup is probably the only low-risk way of achieving that. Creating your own startup is of course always an option but requires significant upfront capital, a huge opportunity cost in terms of how much you work and a significant cut to your salary. (if anything).

>I know many early stage employees that achieved significant financial upside by working at early stage startups .Working at an early stage startup is probably the only low-risk way of achieving that.

I mean knowing "many" is different than that being the majority of the cases, and I would strongly dispute that working at a startup is a "low risk" way of achieving some huge financial upside. I in fact remember seeing on Hacker news a few months back (I'll see if I can find it) a study that basically stated that in the aggregate employee stock options at startups aren't worth the risk.

Agreed. Isn't the general advice to treat the options as worthless and always negotiate for more cash whenever possible? Then, in the rare case they are worth something it's a nice bonus, but not something that should ever be relied upon.

> low-risk way

Unless it goes bankrupt or has some other issue and you don't get paid or get fired.

I do not like this idea that startup employees aren't taking a risk. It encourages extremely one sided behavior.