The obvious other factors in this reframing of equity compensation effectively render it a useless take.

The disparity in expected value calculation is due to assuming you can predict the future after joining a company, which is obviously not true. If you can always tell a company is going to succeed after 1 year of working there, you should leave, as you are clearly destined to be the most successful venture capitalist in history

Not to be overly negative, I think this perspective is somewhat misleading as it lets one rationalize valuing startup equity as anything more than a gamble. Which it is, and always has been. Sometimes gambles work out though.