Startups that fail tend to do so early, before they've hired a lot of people. Far more equity grants are given out by series C-D-E startups because they're able to hire vastly more people, and the rate of failure of those companies is much lower.

And again, that's still not a reason just to ignore the equity component of an offer. You're clearly cynical about equity - that's fine. Understand your equity and use that information to negotiate for less of it and more salary (or whatever else you prefer).

https://medium.com/@bharatanant/evaluating-the-risk-reward-r...

They are only talking about investors who have first preference in any “success” of the company and they are usually well diversified and not depending on one successful exit. You as an employee get lower preferences and have all of your eggs in one basket.

Now given a choice, why would I work for a startup instead of a profitable FAAMG (not a typo) where I get RSUs or even a “second tier” profitable tech company like Salesforce, Adobe, Intel, Nvidia, etc. where at every vesting event I have the opportunity to immediately sell and diversify my risks? I don’t need to depend on the long term viability of my RSUs. Just the viability over the next six months?