Equity

From Yiren Lu's very good opinion piece in this week's NYTimes Magazine, "Silicon Valley's Youth Problem." Emphasis mine.

These are places where the C.E.O. often sits alongside the engineers, where recruiters talk about a “flat” hierarchy as a perk on par with paternity leave, where regular engineers get equity. Some of these changes have occurred out of necessity. “In the ‘80s, it was not uncommon to pay people salaries and give them few if any stock options,” Biswas said. “Now, you can’t have a company like Facebook and attract that kind of talent without offering equity.” 

Ownership is *really* powerful.