"felt (mostly) left out of the party" is perhaps accurate, although the engineer in question was one of the four founders (see my longer recent item in this thread).
Based on what happened to him I'd have to wonder if later employees got much more than beer money.
I wouldn't say not caring about employee equity participation is a good founder quality.
In fact this whole thread just goes to show that Garmin fails miserably at motivating it's engineers to this day.