This is why it was a founder that complained about the equity/pay problems, rather than any engineer.

If they actually rewarded their Waze employees with enough equity, the employees would have pushed much harder to not get acquired and been much more upset afterwards. You should be highly suspect of any investor or founder that thinks an acquisition is a successful outcome.

What's clear is that Waze employees finally got compensated fairly, and the founders suddenly didn't have 100x upside. There's a reason it's a founder with the frown at TGIF at Google, and all the employees are excited and smiling.

They're finally getting paid.

Yes, while financially you may be better with BigCorp, there are some benefits of startups that I experienced first hand. First is the experience of being a fast-moving startup and the comradeship that you build with your colleagues. I'm still friends with people I worked with at my first startup 15 years ago. Second is the learning experience of being around very smart people. I learned so much in my 4 years at my first startup. From how startups work (and that my equity was worthless) to how to do modern (at the time) development in Java. Finally, as someone mentioned earlier, you get to see how your work moves the needle. That feedback cycle is addictive! Also, you can see when you screw up the opposite happen (I once personally caused a loss of a couple hundred dollars in revenue due to a bad SQL query).

Apple stock was essentially a flat line until about 2004. At which point, a random person who put in $10,000 would today have $4,000,000 had they held.

Another point. If you are outside of SV / California your startup payouts are generally very small.