A perspective from India. I was at one of the big 4 when I made the decision to leave for a startup. (The salaries at FAAMG aren't quite so eye popping relative to other companies in Bangalore and are about 1/3th to 1/10th those in the Bay Area.) I tried to look for a founder for whom I could work for, but the conclusion that I came to, was that it made no economic sense working for an early stage startup (pre Series-A) as an employee in India. Equity had no value, particularly as it not only had all the problems that equity has in a Silicon Valley startup, but given the very weak legal system, it would be impossible to enforce contracts. Post Series-B the salaries are quite attractive by Indian standards (still 1/5-1/10 of bay area). So I went the founder route. The irony is that as a founder, this situation now comes to bite me. It is next to impossible for an early stage startup to hire engineers, even at market rates. You have to pay a substantial premium over market to compensate for the risk the employee is taking. This may be one of the reasons, that India will have trouble starting hard-tech companies. The startups that I see getting traction, are typically market focused -- e.g. food delivery, etc. So are not as tech-heavy as as say a SaaS startup might be, as they rely on scaling up a low-skill workforce (delivery men etc...)