Stories like this seem to validate that people should choose real liquid equity of public companies over the paper equity of startups when considering employment.
But that assumes that all other things are equal, which isn't true. It's a very different experience working for a startup.
That said, if one has the choice between a startup job vs. one with equity with real value, they should only consider taking any startup comp package with the intention of being fully okay with their decision if the equity goes to zero. And note that this is a decision you can reevaluate periodically.
Read https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation and ask all of the questions. Probably ask a couple more, like about liquidation preferences and conversion of vested ISOs to NSOs with long expiration if you leave before liquidity.