I got lucky as an early employee (first engineering hire) who got stock rather than options. I’m not sure how typical it is but I think they didn’t switch to option grants until about a year after I started, though granted they we’re still quite small probably sub-20 employees at that time.

I’m very relieved not to be holding options. I got kind of burned by them on my first job. I was forced to sell on the secondary market as they were expiring and I wasn’t willing to take that bet (which was the right choice given the information I had at the time IMO) but they IPO’d a year or so later and are currently sitting at ~4x the price I got. Still, I’m lucky to have walked away with anything.