Throwaway account here
I've now owned stock in five different companies throughout my career. The company I'm currently in is going through a buyout and it's the first time I'll ever see any money from any deal. I've been at this company since it's early days and watched it grow from an unknown company with barely enough money to pay it's employees, into a $16-18 million a year player in our industry.
At the end of the day my shares are worth about $100k, which if you average it out, brings my 5 years salary up to the industry average. When they first told me the value of my shares, I thought I was getting screwed, that they must have diluted the shares without telling us. Turns out that after all these years of hype, our shares ended up equaling 1x revenue instead of the 3x revenue they claimed would be the "bottom of the barrel" value in the event of a sale.
The work as always interesting, but the payout means having much less money then anticipated to start my own business.