I think HN has grown large enough that there appears to be several competing hiveminds. I remember once commenting about people using their free time to contribute to open source and a ton of people sarcastically asked where they could find it. Then on another thread the next day, I saw ton of people extolling the benefits of contributing to open source in your free time. HN's all grown up to have multiple personalities.

> I'm surprised by the support you're getting, because the HN hivemind fully supports it when founders exit with 50-10000x what rank and file gets.

The HN Hivemind that I've witnessed as of the last 18 months or so is decidedly supportive of founders giving up much much more equity to employees, owing to ease of fundraising and low capital startup costs, combining to derisk the once very personally risky endeavor of starting a company.

In that sense the hivemind currently loosely follows the words of Sam Altman who is the present overmind of YC, so it is rather apt.

Except when a startup founder fails at their job the company is usually shut down or the acquihire leaves them with a small payout. When a startup makes it big, many of the rank and file have large payouts as well.

American CEOs get paid obscenely cartoonishly evil amounts of money for running companies into the ground. Even when the company does really well and they get massive stock grants, the rank and file get nothing.

> the rank and file get nothing.

They get less than nothing, they get fired.

Sometimes they even lose what they had earned - pensions for example.

The founders are given the benefit of the doubt for actually having put in some hard work for little reward back when the success of the business was unclear.

As you say, anyone can found a business. Getting hired as a CEO is entirely to do with contacts; it's not usually a job that's advertised and you can apply for.