Teaching founders is one thing, but equally as important is providing a platform that prospective employees can use to find out which startups are giving employees a fair deal.

Speaking as a bigco eng who would love to join a startup, but is disillusioned by the economics of it.

I pretty much ignore startup recruiters now because of my personal experience with the dynamic explained in the article.

If recruiters explained that yes, we don't actually shaft you in their message, I might actually take a look.

What do you think are the next steps in improving this?

My impression is that the one thing that will make a significant change in this is that private shares are liquid in secondary markets like Forge or Sharespost. It would be revolutionary to also valuate companies from the perspective of employees, being able to pick winners and negotiate more stock from the not-so-winners, where stock is worth less.

For what it's worth. I ignore private company equity offers of all stages as it's impossible to fairly value the equity which inevitably leads to an undervalued total compensation package - even on successful exit. I'd expect that the market would work out the generosity component if the terms were fair - but right now great startups are competing for employees with their second scarcest resource (cash) with companies that have effectively unlimited cash and great liquid equity. This is a recipe to burn the startups first scarcest resource (time) as projects run slower due to weaker execution, and for later stage companies leadership.

Good to hear this.

I would be happy to spend an hour on a call with you and provide my very humble suggestions, if you're up for it. My HN username at gmail.

Edit: of course we can do this over email, too. I just feel that in the year of Covid, you don't throw away an opportunity for a warmer human connection.