This article just makes me want to start a discussion about how equity offers are even more worthless to me than the rapidly declining dollar. Do people still think that they'll make it big off of equity when they aren't the founders of a company?

Also, this year's biggest IPO was <sarcasm> GM </sarcasm>. Nobody is getting rich off of stock options in this market.

I agree with you that the amount of equity given to employees should increase. When previously equity was taken up by early rounds of funding needed for startup costs that is no longer necessary. The early costs now are people and they should be rewarded with ample equity.

But people still very much do get rich off of options. GreenDot, OpenTable, Qlik Technologies, Facebook and more companies will make employees very wealthy via options.

It's not employees at those companies I worry about though.

More companies are exiting after a few years for 50-100M and their employees get a few hundred thousand while founders walk with tens of million.

Perhaps it's not so bad as being a founder is extremely difficult but its seems disproportionate when early employees join within the first few months.