Maybe the other way to look at it is, the "established players" can only employ so many people. Many of them are paying some pretty insane salaries now (I consider over $200K pretty insane) - but as I said, they can only employ so many people. In my case the salary is plenty good without even having to take equity into account. And the work is likely much more interesting than I'd get to do in an established company. Also, if the startup makes it I could be in a pretty good position being able to call a lot of my own shots as to what I'm going to work on and how I'm going to work on it - autonomy.

All that to say, it seems a lot more like a lottery trying to get a job with the established players (after jumping through all their interview hoops), and while the money might be better, the type of work, what you work on, the level of autonomy you're given (or not) is also very important.