Yes, there are anecdotes of individuals who had a large payout from being an early employee. It's a major risk/reward proposition, and the likelihood of the reward is quite low.

It's basically like being paid in lottery tickets. Fine so long as the rest of your salary is enough to pay the bills, not fine if you depend on it for your retirement, and either way, some of us would prefer the well defined payout of cash.

Except its not really like that at all. You get paid in cash plus equity. The value of the equity part is somewhat under your control. Hard to affect the value of the lottery ticket.

It may seem hopeless, and indeed many other factors do make good product companies fail. But when other factors do NOT intervene, then the remaining value does depend on your execution.