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Equity compensation is asking employees to invest their labor in the company. If you’re honest about your intention not to generate any return on their investment and they do it anyway, I guess that’s fine, but it seems more likely that people taking those offers are being misled.

Sustainable businesses can buy the labor they need with present cash flows and don’t need to sell people on the possibility of future ones.

And that's why every time someone ask how much salary reduction they must accept because they got a .1% equity, the best answer is $0. (And get the offer in written, just in case.)

not if you traded early comp for the promise of astronomical equity returns. Especially if you were sold hard on this by the founders; in this scenario they have failed because the goal was not to build a stable, self-sustaining business.

The people who invested money in it expecting explosive growth at high valuations.