> Don't they use that spiel to get you to take less salary and a smaller cut of equity?

They sure used to, but these days at a funded and successful C/D you'll get very similar cash. The market for engineers is insane right now. I've seen Meta starting salary levels offered by even earlier stage companies.

[edit] As for the equity angle, it really depends - but generally speaking if you're being offered options I'd divide by 3 when comparing to an RSU offer (i.e. expect 3X as many options as RSUs) which triples your leverage even if they're intrinsically not worth anything on receipt. And depending on the stage, that equity could easily be dramatically more valuable even if you get less to start. This is more of a question of how much leverage you have in your negotiation.

I highly recommend becoming friends with a recruiter wherever you work :) being able to find out what you should be making next time is a super-power, and they're generally super fun and friendly people!

The missing element from the RSU/options conversion is the (very important) liquidity premium. For a Series C company, I would expect to not see material liquidity from options for 4+ years, so I would discount the options by at least 70% off the top to account for lack of liquidity and possibility of future funding rounds reducing the value of my options.

Engineers who had options during the .com crash and the GFC can share more about why near-term liquidity matters.

Yeah, you're right, liquidity commands a strong premium IMO. Depends on your risk tolerance.

Not sure if this is still true, as most of these sorts of companies have gone public, but there was a period between 2015 and 2019 where these sorts of late stage startups were paying comparable base salaries but were giving what was essential double the amount of equity. For people who got this deal and held onto their stock until today they're better off by a lot than had they worked at FANG.