You're definitely getting shafted if you're working for a privately held start-up and they don't give you a 10 year exercise window. Many start-ups pay "median" salary or below, which make their numbers look bad versus levels.fyi. But in many cases if a start-up has an exit, then early employees will easily eclipse what they'd earn at FAANG. (Later employees, maybe not ..).
If I have learned one thing is that's much better to get paid very well for 20 years at a big tech company than it is to be paid median at some smaller outfit hoping to hit the jackpot.
Because even when the start-up has a successful exit, and even if you were an early employee, you'll still have a very small chance of out-earning your buddy who joined big tech.
This has been especially true in the past 10 years: look at the stock prices of Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. They've all gone up significantly, making those yearly RSU additions even more valuable. In a rising market, a 4 year vesting schedule works to the advantage of its owner.
Actually it’s rare for the options to be worth more than FAANG options. Only the earliest stage employees do well, and adjusted for the risk they take, it’s a really bad deal
The 10 year exercise window should be standard behavior by now; if you're not given 10 years, your employer sadly doesn't want to be competitive. https://triplebyte.com/blog/fixing-the-inequity-of-startup-e...