This is quite one sides view. There are many many examples such as Word, Excel, Google Maps, Gmail, FB Messanger etc started as “startup within big co”. Initially they were small, people worked hard and then they become very big. When they were small (<50) people, those early folks ripped similar rewards as early startup employees. Many later became distinguished engineers, CVPs raking many millions over the years. I don’t know when you joined PowerBI but the probability of you getting disproportionate rewards if you weren’t in first 50 employees in usual startup is not very high either.

I don’t agree with thesis in this article. Yes, most startup efforts in big co fails but failure rate is probably not worse than usual startups. For successful startups within big co, rewards are pretty huge as well. For Waze case, I had argue that they were already running out of steam when they joined Google even though they continued growth. It wouldn’t be feasible for them to compete effectively while growing exponentially with strong and free product like Google Maps as their competition. I am doubtful if Waze employees would have faired vastly better as independent startup.