the author said double digit equity should be given to cofounder, * not founding engineer *.

You can browse startup boards and generally you'll get 0.1% to 2% equity of the company for being a "founding engineer".

I agree that you should not be trying to find an engineer to take on a huge amount of risk co-founding a business and offer them a measly 0.1 to 2% stake in the company.

It seems to me like the author is arguing that the you don't need a CTO, you need a technical co-founder, AKA a founding engineer, and that they should be given double-digit equity. Am I reading this wrong?