I will not forget Argo AI trying to convince me that if I stayed with the company for four years, by then my equity would be worth an estimated $700,000. I made it just over a year in stressful, high-pressure environment, with a toxic manager; I knew it was time for my weekly one-on-one because my heart rate monitor would start giving me warnings. He loved to humiliate individual employees in our scrum team meetings; at one point I called him out on it and demanded that he apologize for his unprofessional bullying. He actually did, but our working relationship was never good after that.

Anyway, my enormous efforts and long hours got me a "meets expectations" review. The company imploded just after I completed that first year, and so my equity was worth nothing. Good times!