"If you really want stability and a paycheck, why not go work for Google?"
Because you can often get a less corporate job doing work you enjoy more with people you enjoy more while still having manageable risk and progressing your career. That goes triple for software engineers in the Bay Area, for whom "out of a job" is a minimal risk that frequently results in a pay raise.
People mostly don't work for startups for the lottery ticket. Equity isn't really compensation, or shouldn't be taken as compensation, so much as it's a social signal. And even then, equity is more about investors than employees. Equity only evaluates to any sort of compensation at all in the event of an exit, in which case they want the senior staff to have some degree of additional incentive not to immediately leave for a new gig.
Because you can often get a less corporate job doing work you enjoy more with people you enjoy more while still having manageable risk and progressing your career. That goes triple for software engineers in the Bay Area, for whom "out of a job" is a minimal risk that frequently results in a pay raise.
People mostly don't work for startups for the lottery ticket. Equity isn't really compensation, or shouldn't be taken as compensation, so much as it's a social signal. And even then, equity is more about investors than employees. Equity only evaluates to any sort of compensation at all in the event of an exit, in which case they want the senior staff to have some degree of additional incentive not to immediately leave for a new gig.