Depends on what time period we are talking about - if over 4 years, then $1 million is a handsome return for an early stage (non founding, first 10) engineer at a successful startup. If over 8 years, then $1 million equity return works out to be $125K/year - not as exciting. I'd suggest the odds for a $1million equity return over eight years is closer to 1/20. Still lousy odds, but a great engineer can shift them by making the company successful.
I know engineers that have made over $250k/yr total compensation (including salary, bonus, and stock options) over the last 2 years alone. And this is for a well established post-IPO company (not Google). I think their take home just from monthly vesting stock was roughly $150k over 2 years.
I still remember the thread where someone asked about how much people made out on an exit, and it seemed like firmly 80% of the people who responded said that they got screwed by the founders or VC, and only one said that he made enough for a downpayment on a house. So to me, 5% odds to make $1MM over 8 years seems really high.
It would be an interesting statistic to see how many startups have been started since 2008 and what their success rate has been.
