If you’re at a small and pre-public startup, your decisions and effort can directly affect product success BUT the equity is only theoretically valuable someday in the distant future so you ignore it.
If you’re public and getting stock/rsus, your company is likely large enough that there’s nothing you can do single-handedly to affect the price.
The first software startup I worked at didn't give out equity, and when the sales guys closed big deals with aggressive delivery timelines we hated it because it just meant more work for us. Many of my teammates passive aggressively dragged their feet, but if we'd had equity we would've been high-fiving the sales guys after landing big clients.
- More money leads to more output for physical tasks
- More money leads to worse results for cognitive tasks
What does move the needle:
- Pay people enough so they’re not thinking about the money
- Desire for autonomy, mastery, impact
I've found that even when we were incentivized via direct & simple profit sharing mechanisms, we still struggled with the appropriate focus and urgency. You'd think additional piles of money based upon # of customers coming in the door would provoke substantially more activity.
Money is a huge distraction. The most successful phases of my career have involved putting the customer absolutely first and looking at the money as a causal event based upon a job well done. I've never looked at a direct deposit into my bank account and felt the kind of rush of happiness I get when I see a customer reply that an issue is resolved to their satisfaction.