you're right, people can't. If you want shot at a significant chunk of a multi billion dollar sale you start your own company. As the github founders did.

If you want up be paid $x a fortnight right from the get go then you get a job.

I don't see how the success of people who chose to do A means people that did B got screwed, just because they both worked on the same project. The decisions they made and context of their choosing to work on it were still different things each with their own pros and cons

Unless there was some more to it. Like share /options shenanigans that might not be legally fraud but fraud in spirit. No one seems to be saying that happened here though.

> If you want shot at a significant chunk of a multi billion dollar sale you start your own company. As the github founders did.

False dichotomy. People join startups (esp. early ones) thinking they have a shot at a significant chunk. But even for the very first employees, the equity numbers are ridiculously small. I don't understand why they sign up for it.

All my friends in startups work damn hard and poured huge chunks of their lives into it, and it has not been fun watching them be offered meager positions post-acquisition, while their founder/CEOs get multi-million paydays.

That is why you get paid for your time, and it is probably a lot. Leave work at work and move on when it is time. It's just a job. Those founders did much more than the people you know. They took a massive risk at complete failure

Does those people being wrong mean anything from a moral /rightness / "getting screwed" perspective? I make mistakes like anyone else, sometimes pretty big ones to the tune of quite a lot of money. Wouldn't say I've been screwed though. I just fucked up.

So, you are positing that the employees were screwed here? Do you have some evidence for that claim?

Only if you're suggesting that the employees chose to work there because they thought they had the right terms and were expecting a multi-billion dollar sale from which to benefit. If you have evidence for that, I expect you've freely chosen to work for such a company yourself and that you're entirely confident in your situation. (Or else the money just doesn't matter that much to you. That's ok too!)

They're all free to attempt to start their own GitHub competitor, if they're able. The founders of GitLab did.

Yes, hooray for freedom. Have the same opportunity, personal fininces, acceptable level of risk, and luck is another matter.

I don't see how it makes any sense to demand a hefty cut from a successful investment while intentionally turning a blind eye to the risk that was assumed by the actual investors. For exampld, I really doubt these we would be discussing how employees were obliged to pay up the company's debt if Github was bankrupt, and how it would be immoral for them to not be responsible for the venture's finantial outcome.