Yeah... all those promises were what are technically known in the industry as "lies". You will never see a market level salary or even a raise, and once that 2% equity has been through dilution it will be more like 0.2% at most. Sorry, but there's no way this situation will play out well for you. Another thing you probably don't want to hear is that you are not "senior level" if you lack the experience to have figured this out for yourself. Not even close.
You can learn from this and never be played like a sucker again, but many people it takes 2 or 3 goes around to realize. But it's fine for the CEO, there'll be another 22-year-old around to take this deal in a year.
> Another thing you probably don't want to hear is that you are not "senior level" if you lack the experience to have figured this out for yourself.
There are many examples where I don't think there's a strong connection between the level of professional experience with the familiarity with the startup environment/lingo/negotiation.
There is nothing really startup-specific in the scenario. There are exploitative bosses in all industries and all sizes of company. Someone who's played knifey-spooney before would know this.
I know this post/comment is aging but I feel I have to add my disagreement. Depending on skill and perhaps more than a little luck, navigating your way up to a senior position in the "old school" corporate world can actually be relatively conflict-free. Certainly, exploitative bosses are as widespread as you suggest, but that doesn't mean that every boss is exploitative.
I definitely agree about seeing the raise to market level... When I was hired they were supposedly going after 2-5M funding (so far its been ~1M in family money put into it), they said once either the additional funding or 50k mrr was hit that my salary (and the others) would go up. A few months ago the CEO's position shifted to wanting to "grow organically". Now it's pretty clear it could be 6months - 1 year before either funding or the mrr are hit (if the company survives that long) and I don't plan to wait, BUT, the main reason I hadn't made a move yet is because it's buying me time to work on a side project while still having some income stream. The thing is I don't want to get played like that and if the company suddenly sees growth (possible), I don't want to be stuck with low equity for all the work I'm contributing. I also only meant senior level in terms of development work, I'm sure I have more to learn in the startup realm.
You can learn from this and never be played like a sucker again, but many people it takes 2 or 3 goes around to realize. But it's fine for the CEO, there'll be another 22-year-old around to take this deal in a year.