I remember when Facebook, I think it was, was going public. There was a ton of consternation about avoiding a “Google chef” situation. Google had a chef that got paid a bunch of equity as if they were an engineer, and they got filthy rich when Google went public. This was, of course, an outrage. A lowly chef getting rich from a startup IPO! We all know that the founders are supposed to get wealthy beyond all reason, regular engineers are supposed to get fairly rich depending on how early they started, and regular people aren’t supposed to get anything special.

As if the chef didn’t contribute. People have to eat!

We have weird ideas about who deserves the rewards. This idea that starting a company that gets big counts as “earning” a billion dollars makes some strong assumptions about who deserves what.