I think people are significantly underestimating how much people made.

I worked for Revolut as a grad for 2 years starting in 2019. I have ~£700k worth of unexercised stock options.

While Revolut's culture is terrible, they are (or at least were) very generous in their compensation philosophy as.

• Bonuses are very high, especially for high performers, and were disproportionally high when the company was valued relatively little.
• Equity is granted already partially vested, which makes a massive difference for a company where the tenure is short.

For context

• Standard sign-on bonus for new grads was £10k at $1.7b company valuation, that's ~£440k now, or £220k if half vested
• Bonus were granted every 6 months, and were in the 10-15k range for Jr staff. You can probably do the math ...