Clearly Sam Altman and a few other people in thread have stopped to think about this. :) Part of what he's telling people here is "look, your competition for the engineers who can help you deliver includes Google and Facebook, your expected value has to be comparable to what they can offer."

Of course, that's still talking about equity, which gets back to the fact that it really is best to treat your equity as little better than a lottery ticket -- something with the possibility of turning into a modest bonus and the remote chance of making you wealthy.

> experienced developers conclude that other options are a better use of their time.

Which I suppose is part of the reason the startup labor pool skews young. Occasionally, though, experienced developers get bored and need new opportunities too.