This is pretty typical of my experience. I was offered 0.1% at my first startup (angel-funded, about 4 months old, I was straight out of high school, think I was employee #13 but the first 6 or so employees were from an earlier bootstrapped incarnation of the company and were no longer there). 0.022% at a startup I interviewed with just out of college (series A coming up on a series B, about a year and a half old, employee #22). No equity at the startup I ended up taking a job with - companies that intend to remain private forever are often very stingy in giving away stock.
It's pretty typical to have health benefits but no 401k. You should be getting roughly market-rate compensation at a funded startup though; that's why they have funding. If you want big stock grants, you need to take big risks, i.e. work for little or no salary.
Edit: One more thing that I want to add since I've seen many friends get burned or disillusioned by this: you should assume that the only thing you'll get out of a startup is the cash you're paid and the experience of having worked there. Very few early employees cash out with enough that they never have to work again: the ones I know all fall into 3 categories:
1.) They founded the company.
2.) The company went public and became a household name.
3.) They joined early and rose really high, i.e. VP level.
The vast majority of early startup employees don't fit these categories: either their company is acquired in the $40M range and they end up with $3K (true story), or their equity is diluted by multiple successive funding rounds so that they end up owning a tiny fraction of their initial equity stake (also a true story), or the company goes bust and their equity is worth nothing (yeah, that's me). If you go in expecting a job where you'll learn things and hopefully build something cool, then any massive payday is just gravy. If you go in expecting a massive payday, you'll probably be disappointed.
Thank you very much for your remarks. It looks like I am in a typical ballpark as far as the equity compensation goes, maybe slightly above average. And I am definitively planning to continue to work after this. :) But I also hope in "some" payday, otherwise I wouldn't be taking any stocks.
I could get market rate salary with less stock, but I think I am going with a below-market salary and more stocks. About that, I am still trying to decide the right balance...
Financially, you're almost always better off taking more cash and less stock. In the average startup, things do not go well, so a raise in 8 months may not really be in the cards (and if things are going well, your equity will be worth much more than your salary anyway).
But there are intangible benefits to taking more equity and less salary. You work harder, which means that you get to work on more interesting things, which opens up more doors in the future. If I were to take a job now (and I'm looking :-)), I'd probably go for more equity and a lower salary as long as it's adequate to cover basic living costs, if only because there're only so many material comforts that one needs...
At one point, I had something like 10K Linuxcare options, when VA Linux and Redhat had recently had huge IPO's and were trading well north of $100. Sigh...
It's not something I think about much though. I was paid well and got a lot of other things out of the experience. However...yeah, it's pretty easy for things to turn sour in a hurry.
It's pretty typical to have health benefits but no 401k. You should be getting roughly market-rate compensation at a funded startup though; that's why they have funding. If you want big stock grants, you need to take big risks, i.e. work for little or no salary.
Edit: One more thing that I want to add since I've seen many friends get burned or disillusioned by this: you should assume that the only thing you'll get out of a startup is the cash you're paid and the experience of having worked there. Very few early employees cash out with enough that they never have to work again: the ones I know all fall into 3 categories:
1.) They founded the company.
2.) The company went public and became a household name.
3.) They joined early and rose really high, i.e. VP level.
The vast majority of early startup employees don't fit these categories: either their company is acquired in the $40M range and they end up with $3K (true story), or their equity is diluted by multiple successive funding rounds so that they end up owning a tiny fraction of their initial equity stake (also a true story), or the company goes bust and their equity is worth nothing (yeah, that's me). If you go in expecting a job where you'll learn things and hopefully build something cool, then any massive payday is just gravy. If you go in expecting a massive payday, you'll probably be disappointed.