Nothing about this article or thread is taking about total comp. It’s talking about specifically base salary. ~$200k is in-line with plenty of companies’, even large ones’, bands for L5 FTEs.
Ok. Regardless, you're not going to get a cash offer at a startup that rivals the "today" dollar value of a publicly traded company offering RSUs as compensation. Whether the risk is worth it to you or not is a different and unrelated discussion.
