This is a severely under-appreciated situation. One has to wonder how many good employees a company misses out on because the traditional style of Silicon Valley capitalism is to be one of the first 20 people in the company or you'll be clawing for scraps like the next 2,000.
Is there an opportunity for any meaningful equity/options when joining a company that size? Or should candidates be focused on salary and other benefits at that size?
Absolutely. In fact it's somewhat better. If you join a big company like that, they're not going to be able to give you 1% of mythical future company value, but they CAN give you X shares now with very real value. If you join a 500-2000 person company with a $1B+ valuation and stick it out for four years of hard work and promotions - you can easily be looking at a $500k-$2M payout (above and beyond your high salary). More is possible too. This is why even giants like Facebook and Google can still attract top engineers - they can give you equity that's basically equivalent to cash - and lots of it.
Joining a smaller company gives you the chance at a massive payout of $10M+ - but I'd bet your 4-year "expected value" would be much less than joining a bigger company. For one - your options are going to be worth anywhere between $0 and $1B - but heavily weighted towards zero. Two - you have to actually buy your options with cash, which reduces mobility because this is very risky! This often costs $20k or more. So you may leave your options on the table. Very few people would be leaving options on the table at somewhere like Uber today if they quit. You'd find the money and buy your shares. Three - your potential exits are numerous but many of them are the sort of deals that kind of devalue your equity to near worthless (due to LP) and instead buy the team with employment offers and new golden handcuffs - which can be highly variable. An IPO or mega acquisition is a clean transaction for common stock holders.
