Options are worse because they cost you money year after year: the difference in salary you could have made instead of taking a job that offered those options in lieu of a market salary.
If im offered a job that comes with options but pays $1000/yr less than I’m making now, I have to ask myself: why not just keep my current job and spend that $1000/yr on an investment with similar risk/reward profile? If I’m willing to do that then I should just keep my job and buy that investment. If I’m not willing to do that, than I shouldn’t take the job, because that’s in essence what it would mean. In either case I shouldn’t take the job.
The uncertainty of startup equity makes it impossible to do the same probable value calculations you can do on lottery tickets.