I left a stable job for a startup that promised equity — and lost three years.

I was thirty-one, comfortable, and restless in exactly the wrong way. The startup offered a title upgrade, a vague equity package, and the feeling that I was missing something. The founders were compelling people who spoke in first principles and moved fast. I joined in month two, employee number seven.

For eighteen months I built the core product. Late nights, weekends, a kind of focused devotion I had not felt in years. The team was small enough that my work was clearly visible. I was good at this. I believed in it.

Then the Series A closed and the founders hired above me. The new VP of Product arrived with a different vision and a different team. My scope narrowed over four months. By month twenty I was maintaining a subsystem no one cared about. The equity cliff had passed. I was vesting on a schedule that had become the only reason to stay.

Looking back, I mistook excitement for alignment. The founders were genuinely building something but they were also genuinely optimising for a different outcome than the one I imagined. No one lied. The incentives just diverged.