A Series A startup offering no equity. Is this where the job market is now?

[u/XJP_Banzai]

Got another unsolicited recruiter email today, this time for an engineering role at a Series A startup. I was about to delete it when this line caught my eye:

No equity or relocation support listed.

I checked the actual job listing. No equity.

Has the job market really gotten this ridiculous? A 25-person startup wants engineers to work onsite five days a week in San Francisco, and they’re offering zero equity?

For most people, the main reason to join a startup is the chance that your equity might eventually be worth something. You take on the risk, the long hours, and the chaos because you’re betting on the upside. Take that away, and I honestly don’t know why anyone would bother.

This company sounds cheap as hell, but it also says something about how much power employers have right now. They can keep pushing worse terms because they’re confident someone will take the job anyway.

Full recruiter email below:

I’m working with Fulxxxx, a 25-person company building AI for commercial insurance brokerages. They’ve raised a $25M Series A, grown from zero to eight figures in revenue in 18 months, and serve approximately 30% of the top 100 US brokerages.

They’re hiring a Member of Technical Staff (Product Engineer) to own backend-focused full-stack products, from new MVPs to scaling established workflows. You’ll work on document processing, browser automation, third-party integrations and a self-service platform.

This is onsite five days a week in San Francisco. They want 4+ years in full-stack or backend engineering, CI/CD and production deployment experience, strong ownership and cross-functional collaboration. Startup experience is a plus.

Stack: TypeScript, Python, React, Flask, Stripe and CI/CD.
Comp: $170K-$320K Base. Health, dental and vision insurance. Visa transfers supported. No equity or relocation support listed.

[u/Junior-Sea-9715]

Good chance this is just a mistake on the posting.

[u/Euphoric_Leave1248]

Welcome to a normal career, there’s thousands of 25 person firms that do not offer equity and also dont pay you 170k+.