The generosity emerges out of the availability for lending the capital to strangers in society thanks to the successful investment realization.
You can do whatever you want of course, but I think people should ask themselves if trying to hold onto all the returns is helping them achieve what they actually want.
... so don't take the job. Everything will naturally sort itself out -- a startup will increase their grants, hire different people, or not hire and fail. :shrug:
This thread sure looks like it's full of people who can't get that well paid job at google, are taking jobs at less demanding employers out of necessity, and are mad about it. Otherwise, we're living through one of the absolutely hottest markets for engineering talent we've ever seen, so getting a new job is always an option if you're worth the money.
As for founder vs employee risk... certainly at my company, every employee except for the founders walked into a six figure cash comp, fully paid health insurance, and a runway that's never fallen below 12 months.
But anyway, I would urge founders to think more about the logarithmic utility of money and whether it makes sense to take 30x+ the gains of early employees. In particular, think of the number that make it all worthwhile and ask if you need to capture all the gains above that, or whether you could be more generous if you hit it out of the park, and if there is a way to write that into your contracts.