Seriously - the whole point of giving your early employees equity is so that you can attract talent without blowing your budget.

It seems like most founders love pretending that there are armies of top-tier engineers rushing to work at their startup in exchange for pay that's well below market and stock that still won't be worth very much even if the company has a wildly successful IPO.

I really wonder why this happens - is it just greed from the founders? The VCs? Do early employees value stock like shit regardless of how transparent the company is?