I made over $2M from stock options. Lots of people sold their stock as soon as it vested, in which case it would've amounted to about $1M. If I had held out until now (the price spiked around 2013), it would have been closer to $4M.
I think people don't understand the order of magnitude difference between great companies and astounding companies.
A great company is worth $300 M. Google is worth $300 B.
That means if you would have gotten two THOUSAND dollars from the successful company, you would get two MILLION dollars from Google [1]. 3 orders of magnitude is a big difference!
If your goal is to get rich, it's perhaps a better strategy to join the right company at the right time, rather than start your own company (although that was definitely not my strategy).
Though this advice sounds obvious, I haven't heard it in many places. I recall a startup class lecture [1] from a founder of Asana, on why NOT to do a startup. And he said don't do it for the money -- because if you want to do it for the money, you should join a company like AirBNB or Dropbox now. These are companies that could be at a similar cycle in their growth as Google was in 2005.
In other words, join a great company that could be astounding.
Another source is Piaw Na's book. I don't really know him, and at first I thought it was weird to have a career strategy of choosing companies based on equity, but it's definitely a logical thing to do if you're so inclined:
http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Guide-Silicon-Valley-Startup...
$2M doesn't sound like that much any more, but when I see these HN threads about exits and equity, I believe I made out better than many startup founders, as a regular employee.
[1] caveat: I believe Google was still idealistic and generous in 2005; the Valley has changed a lot in the last decade, so YMMV
[2] I can't find it here, but I thought it was? http://startupclass.samaltman.com/