Employees will make peanuts to nothing if Zoox gets sold for < 3.2 billion. This will make many folks who work at Zoox very unhappy esp with the amount of stress that engrs are taking every day. I hope engrs make some money here otherwise bye bye loyalty.

That's how startups go.

If you want certainty and no chance of winning big, join a Fortune 500 company. If you want uncertainty and a small chance of winning big, join a startup.

For the engineers, they wouldn't likely win big on a sale below a certain value, but that doesn't make it a total loss. They'll have a job at a FAANG with likely a higher total comp than before. Replace stock option lottery tickets with regular RSU dumps at a decent paycheck.

It seems like you are agreeing with previous post that engineers will leave as they may not get enough.

These risks are the same as for any tech startup company. Many people have made a similar gamble with equity. And in the meantime, salaries for AV software developers, machine learning engineers are not exactly below market.

Salaries are usually range from 20 -50% of a total package. True it’s a gamble but folks expect the equity of same or higher value of that of a public company, esp if they work 80+ hour weeks. If they don’t get it, I do see them staying for a bit.