One problem with the article is that is blurs the line between "founder" and "startup employee". The majority of startup employees are getting a paycheck on top of options - paycheck at lower rates than mainstream corporate work, but with a potential payoff if it succeeds. And if it fails, it's not hard for an experienced programmer to find another job.
Founders are a breed apart from programmers. If someone has that drive to create their own business from scratch, telling them that it's economically foolish to do so is like telling Van Gogh that he'd be better off painting houses - technically true, but irrelevant to the motives of the artist.
Very true. Most of the people I know working at startups, myself included, had no delusions of becoming Mark Zuckerberg or winning it big. Startups can provide a great quality of life with good benefits for employees and the big pay off can be a very small motivation for some.
Given the Kafkaesque horror that is most mainstream big-business programming/ops work, startups represent a significant quality-of-life improvement for programmers - an improvement worth trading some salary for. Maximizing salary while minimizing risk isn't and shouldn't be the only motivation for us. I could go on about how stupid mainstream economics and journalism are about this, but why bother?
Founders are a breed apart from programmers. If someone has that drive to create their own business from scratch, telling them that it's economically foolish to do so is like telling Van Gogh that he'd be better off painting houses - technically true, but irrelevant to the motives of the artist.