[variety]

Basically, you should only take a significant options stake if you're in love with the team, the work and the business models for their own sakes. A good quantifier for "in love with", BTW, is if they're doing something that you would almost do for free (if you you had your FY money already).

Either that, or you're working for one of those (very few) startups for which the outsize payout odds are deemed to be especially high, independent of all the other factors. (Advice from friends who happen to be veteran startup junkies can be very, very helpful in assessing this). And provided you have some minimal savings buffer for the case that things go 'poof' -- which is always more likely than not, even given the best of circumstances.

But if it's just a paycheck you're after, then by all means, go for the (substantially bigger) paycheck.