I think it's important to differentiate between a "meanginful" share of the company and stock options in general. For the average engineer, joining after employee #10 where founder allocated 10% to an ever-diluting option pool, that doesn't seem likely.

Perhaps public companies' profit-sharing plans are closer to the mark, except that an individual employee is so much less likely to have the power to "move the needle" on profit that even that's questionable.