Is it really so crazy that people might care about more things than money when considering what to work on?
If I were given the opportunity to go back in time and work at Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, I would probably do so even if paid no money at all. This seems rational to me, both in terms of how much knowledge I could accumulate and just the self-actualization of working on such interesting problems. I imagine the calculation for early employees at start-ups is similar.
A mission and a reasonable distribution of equity with fair terms do not need to be mutually exclusive, that's how I read the original comment.
If the C-levels are still getting massive chunks of equity with tiny strike prices while you get 0.01% and a 90-day post-termination exercise window and a massive AMT bill, then this talk of a "mission" is vacuous and likely a diversion from the fact that you as the employee are being under-compensated.
Saying that a VC-funded startup can provide the same experience as Bell Labs or Xerox Parc is a tremendous false equivalency. Some exceptions might resemble those R&D behemoths. Most will not because VC - with its attendant growth expectations - is antithetical to “tinkering” (a great word another commenter here used).
And good luck picking the exceptions as a potential employee when every such startup has a reality distortion field. I can assure you you’re more likely to end up somewhere run by an Elizabeth Holmes type, who can sell you a compelling narrative that will ultimately flatline. Employees have no window into the reality of a startup from the outside. Very often they don’t get to see that much more on the inside either.
If I were given the opportunity to go back in time and work at Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, I would probably do so even if paid no money at all. This seems rational to me, both in terms of how much knowledge I could accumulate and just the self-actualization of working on such interesting problems. I imagine the calculation for early employees at start-ups is similar.