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Don’t you have to be very early to actually make more than a similar faang job

Depends on the scale of the outcome and whether you are growing in responsibility/impact as the business grows. If you want to make $1+M on a $50M outcome you better be early and hope management doesn’t raise too much money. If you want to make $1+M on a $5B outcome, you want to be a top 200 employee, which is certainly easier if you are early, but is possible if you come later and make a big contribution.

There was actually a thread here on HN a little while ago about how early employees can actually end up with very little.

One memorable comment was "I am that early engineer that got nothing" (or similar, may not be exact quote).

Well said. Not everyone is meant to be a founder and that's ok.