In my experience, only the founders of startups make any money. If the startup is successful, then the founders walk away with millions. Everyone else would be financially better off if they worked for a large company instead.
Also, the executives of the startups take free trips and expense everything on the company's dollar. While the employees receive low pay.
I don't think the large companies are winning. The startups are killing themselves.
> Everyone else would be financially better off if they worked for a large company instead.
To be fair a lot of the change is because large companies are paying people so much these days. Barring large amounts of funding, a Series A- startup (based on the company being 0-2 years old definition of the article) simply can't compete with salaries.
Perhaps startups should start offering far more equity to early employees (I'm surprised you don't see more seed stage firms offering ~5% to senior devs) to compensate for the cash loss.
Nobody will give a senior developer 5% equity when even VCs only take 7% for the first investment that also includes access to professional networking events.
I think this partially the law's fault and partially example bias. I worked for a company who was acquired and I did very well especially considering I was a relatively new employee when the company was acquired. In other words, I think you tend to only hear about the bad stories because employees are pissed. In addition, the 90-day rule for stock options means early employees are rarely able to participate in an exit. I think if the law was changed to remove this 90-day exercise limitation, then a lot more employees would benefit from their shares/options.
Also, the executives of the startups take free trips and expense everything on the company's dollar. While the employees receive low pay.
I don't think the large companies are winning. The startups are killing themselves.