- p: at seed stage (90% failure?) - e: average exit. Should I make the average including instagram, flikr, ... or is 2015 dead for photo sharing apps? What about all the apps with a medium (but undisclosed) exit? How does the calculation change if it's 2009? - t: 2 years because ... instagram. Or will it never happen again?

I think the key is that those values are 100% unknown if you're joining an actual startup. _e_ is unknown, because you're at the beginning of a trend, _t_ is unknown too, because it's too early to know and could be 5 or 10 in your industry.

Could you give me the value of p,e,t for the fourth engineer at Instagram in 2010? (for my area, in data for solar lead generation I don't know of any public exit, let alone the average _t_).

But feel free to totally ignore that part of the post if you feel that that serves you best. And more power to you if you get to actually make bank that way.

But for the people that are capable of making their own way I strongly believe that their best interest lies in doing what they love best and charting their own path, eventually possibly founding their own company where they have a direct say in the success or failure rather than an indirect one and where their chances of getting screwed over are far lower.

The problem I see is access to the data to build that average. But I think we agree on everything else.

I'm a scientist/engineer and became a founder. I'm also distrustful when I meet the typical MBA starting a tech company to get rich quick. I'm just arguing that the uncertainties in that inequality will require some other way to make the decision (Is the pay fair (considering the market rate, the funding, the revenue)? I'm I a valued member of the team? Do I believe in the mission? etc).