Yes - equity should be an incentive to contribute the the company's success, and partial compensation for the risk of going to a startup. One should value it at precisely $0 in terms of life planning.
This becomes truer and truer the more of an employee and the less agency over the company's choices you have, but generally if you're not a co-founder (founding engineer doesn't count) equity traded off against salary is someone scamming you.
Not if you live in a country where you can end up paying more taxes than the equity is worth! Be a little careful with Options and RSUs depending on where you live, and even more so for certain companies etc
> equity should be an incentive to contribute the the company's success
the much bigger motivation is "keep the company afloat so i can keep drawing my salary", so just boring old non-equity paychecks provide plenty of motivation.
if you're an employee that thinks your contributions are so great that you are single-handedly juicing the stock price or valuation, you're probably wrong but if not... you should probably take those skills and found your own startup.
This becomes truer and truer the more of an employee and the less agency over the company's choices you have, but generally if you're not a co-founder (founding engineer doesn't count) equity traded off against salary is someone scamming you.