> Early-stage companies should offer sufficient equity such that their employees should in expectation earn at least the same as they would at a public company.

This would still be underpaying people for a few reasons: expectations are not risk-adjusted, it also doesn't take into account the timeline you get paid on, i.e. the ROI you would get investing your Google salary in an index fund and taxes make getting paid a regular amount over time more valuable than getting a large startup check.

Maybe you were taking these factors into account, but most startup equity offers are massive low balls.