One nitpick, the part about comparing possible startup comp in a unicorn exit and as a senior eng at Facebook over an 8 year period is missing the possible tax benefits of the startup comp. Facebook comp will be taxed as ordinary income as the stock is granted as RSUs (basically 40 - 50% in the US in the $500k/year bracket depending on the state you live in), whereas the majority of a $10 million windfall from being an early employee at a startup that exits after 8 years would likely result in at least half of the tax burden if you did it right and the options were ISOs. With a 4 year standard vesting schedule, the majority of options would have vested far before the startup was a unicorn, and the tax burden at time of option exercise may be very low. Assuming then a long term capital gains rate of 15% at time of sale, the comparison to Facebook comp over the same timeline is about 4x in favor of the startup rather than the 2x the article proposed.
As the author says, though, the startup route is exceedingly risky and very highly likely not to come out ahead.