You sound like the worst employee ever.
What companies really need are wide-eyed, earnest, new college grads who have no idea what goes on in the real world, and how much they are truly being screwed by their current startup.
Those guys rock! They work 100+ hour weeks, they don't have families, or commitments and are willing to do it all for mere peanuts and empty promises of golden rainbows!
Sadly - a few years of this turns them into realistic employees - and you need a whole new batch to replace them.
Why arent you working harder to give shareholders a disproportionate share?
They called 'dibs' on it before you did, so don't go around with sour grapes.
If so, why not work in that job (rather than at a startup)? Or why not found a startup (rather than be an employee)?
Do I think I'm above average? Depends on what you mean by average.
There are zero barriers to entry in becoming a founder - so yes I'm founder material. As is everyone else. The question that actually needs to be asked is: How lucky can one get?
This may just be a situation where the grass looks greener.
One of the employees I had the most respect for was one of our core crypto consultants who explicitly said, "As soon as I walk in the door each day the clock starts, and I charge $500/hour. It stops when I walk out the door." In pretty much those words.
There was no bantering of free lunches or beer bashes (or, for that matter, stock options) with him. All business and execution.
(Yes, founders take more risk--though "fuck, out of a job" is not a risk to be minimized. Founders do also get much more exposure and have a better chance of finding somewhere to land immediately if things go south, as well as foreknowledge of the southerly state of things and a head start on finding that escape route.)
Did they forget to incorporate and will be personally liable for the debts?
They took the risk of renting out a couple $5 a month servers, and buying a domain?
The last startup I was at I had 33 times the equity a guy hired a month later did. I didn't take anymore risk, I just negotiated better and first.
Opportunity costs are a form of risk; being paid a salary reduces (or eliminates) those opportunity costs and thus reduces risk.
Look at this person, using the word "employee". Obviously the suffix -ee is always passive and deprecating, and -er always active enhancing. Employer and employee. Trainer and trainee. Appointer and appointee. Payer and payee.
Which is why people who create wealth, workers, call themselves workers. This person uses a more derogatory, passive term, "employee", who I suppose should thank the heavens that "employer" is a job creator. This says more about them then about you.
Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". With unemployment at highs it has not seen since the mid 1980s, with wealth being drained to the wealthiest heirs of the 1% while the people creating wealth get nothing, this hubris and contempt will backfire on these parasites in time.