I joined a company where my offer letter had two salary options: A higher salary with less stock, or a lower salary with higher stock. (It wasn't a very large difference.)
About a year later, we were sold, and the payout from the stock did not justify the salary difference. In order to justify the difference, the payout needed to be about 20x.
When I confronted the CEO she just changed the subject, and didn't understand why I stopped keeping it a secret that I was looking for another job.
The problem in these situations is that your were offered "stock" as in a portion of the equity of the company, and given a complex financial instrument with undefined terms and indeterminate payout. You felt screwed when you discovered you'd been given something worth 1/20th of the dollar value.
Startups have effectively given away their biggest talent attraction, why bother working for a high risk startup for "options" when you can work for a steady growing FANG with liquidity and real "equity"? From a talent acquisition perspective it doesn't make sense.
To clarify, were you expecting a 20x payout on your stock, or was the payout was 20x less than what you were expecting? Either way, sounds like you got bamboozled when you signed the offer letter. I'd almost always take a higher salary at a startup. The vast majority of startups aren't anywhere near Facebook or Google.
I didn't expect anything with regard to stock value. I know that most startups are fly-by-night, and if the sale didn't happen when it happened, I was going to go somewhere else and leave behind my options.
The reason why I confronted her had less to do with the payout from the sale, and more to do with her general attitude towards compensation.
To put it bluntly, she continued to pay well below market rate, and if she didn't pay up, everyone was going to trickle out the door as we got market rate jobs elsewhere. No one works in an aqui-hire situation below market rate. Her views on compensation were so bad that she had me at the same starting salary that I had when I worked under the same parent company, 5 years prior.
Needless to say, shortly after my conversation with our CEO, she was fired by the parent company, and the new owners promptly fixed the compensation problem.
About a year later, we were sold, and the payout from the stock did not justify the salary difference. In order to justify the difference, the payout needed to be about 20x.
When I confronted the CEO she just changed the subject, and didn't understand why I stopped keeping it a secret that I was looking for another job.