The pendulum hasn't swung far enough, because the predominant meme on HN (because it benefits the YC model
directly!) is that investors and founders are kinda sorta the same class, and early employees and everyone else can eat shit and die ("Graduate to better things").
These same folks will balk at a few points of stock, will backload options so folks're basically handcuffed to a desk for a few years until vested, and will buy into the rubbish pushed by Scott Kupor that explicitly views early employees as obstacles to be stripped of their equity to fuel later growth ("Are there any other management practices where one would optimize for former employees at the expense of current employees?").
This exploitation is slowly getting the results it deserves.
> Equity aligns your incentives with the company and ensures that if it does well, you do well.
There is not a strong correlation between how well the company does and how well you personally do. You can be relieved of your options through contractual shenanigans, you can be put (even with this bill) in a place where you can't afford to exercise them within their window, you can be burned out or injured to the point where you have to leave and then the company reaps the benefits of your work and you don't.
Moreover, your incentives are never aligned with the company, because companies are utter sociopaths and fear no backlash from screwing you over if it makes economic sense. You will almost never legally be in a strong enough position to fight the company with its resources if you find yourself in a bad place--unless the company has grossly fucked up. There can be no meaningful alignment of incentives under such an environment.
> Under capitalism, taking cash is a loser's bargain, not in the sense that you always make less money (you often make more), but in the sense that cash dominates equity only if you've picked a losing organization.
This is a gross over-simplification. If you are unable to maintain a large enough equity chunk, you may not make more than a salary would've provided. If the company stock tanks, you may not make more than a salary would've provided. The idea of "a losing organization" just isn't very useful here, because a lot of organizations "lose" for any number of reasons--unless the definition here is being picked as "an organization whose equity is worth more than salary", which is a cop-out.