Less than 1% seems low to me. Also, we'd be talking about options or stock (likely RSUs) not cash. GOOG was trading around $390/sh 4 years ago. So, if 4 years ago you were offered $150K (which I still think is low) in RSUs @ $390/sh for your start-up equity with some small vesting tranches each year and a large full vesting at the end of 4 years (and you held onto it all), you'd have a little more than $310K today plus your GOOG salary and bonuses for those four years. Not bad for doing ~5 years as dev ops at a start-up like Wavii.