Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

I don't know of anyone personally who got an exit like that but I do know companies are staying private longer nowadays. This can increase the risk for employees. EquityZen (where I work) is trying to make it easier for employees to exit before their company has an liquidity event. This blog post explores Fab and Aereo and how a big exit is not always guaranteed: https://equityzen.com/blog/learning-from-fab-and-aereo-liqui...

For a senior, non management, engineer at one of the big companies in the vally, 250K in total comp is pretty common.

I joined in Google in early 2005, post IPO, as an entry level SWE. I was probably employee #3000 - #9000 (there were about 3000 employees at the time).

I made over $2M from stock options. Lots of people sold their stock as soon as it vested, in which case it would've amounted to about $1M. If I had held out until now (the price spiked around 2013), it would have been closer to $4M.

I think people don't understand the order of magnitude difference between great companies and astounding companies.

A great company is worth $300 M. Google is worth $300 B.

That means if you would have gotten two THOUSAND dollars from the successful company, you would get two MILLION dollars from Google [1]. 3 orders of magnitude is a big difference!

If your goal is to get rich, it's perhaps a better strategy to join the right company at the right time, rather than start your own company (although that was definitely not my strategy).

Though this advice sounds obvious, I haven't heard it in many places. I recall a startup class lecture [1] from a founder of Asana, on why NOT to do a startup. And he said don't do it for the money -- because if you want to do it for the money, you should join a company like AirBNB or Dropbox now. These are companies that could be at a similar cycle in their growth as Google was in 2005.

In other words, join a great company that could be astounding.

Another source is Piaw Na's book. I don't really know him, and at first I thought it was weird to have a career strategy of choosing companies based on equity, but it's definitely a logical thing to do if you're so inclined:

http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Guide-Silicon-Valley-Startup...

$2M doesn't sound like that much any more, but when I see these HN threads about exits and equity, I believe I made out better than many startup founders, as a regular employee.

[1] caveat: I believe Google was still idealistic and generous in 2005; the Valley has changed a lot in the last decade, so YMMV

[2] I can't find it here, but I thought it was? http://startupclass.samaltman.com/

Can we count being paper millionaires for a while?

This is definitely the case.

Sometimes you get lucky and get a mid 6-fig payout (me and a friend did in a medium-sized acquisition), but most of the money I and most of my friends make is from RSUs, high salary, and year-end bonuses that are actually somewhat tied to company performance.

Playing the lottery is all well and good, but a stable high-paying job will yield a higher EV.

Honestly, in this field, even a $1m payout isn't hugely life changing. By your late 20s you should be making at least 150k/yr + bonuses/etc, and with proper investment you'll be fine for retirement.