Early in your career, trading salary for experience is a smart move. In my case, I turned down a Google offer to work at a startup after college (taking a 15%-30% pay cut) and my equity ended up being worth less than I paid to exercise it. But, in the two years that I was there, I learned way more than I would have at Google, and got a much bigger network, both of which helped immensely when I interviewed for my next position.

I agree, working for peanuts is dumb. But 20%-40% less than what Google offers is hardly poverty -- it's still much more than what most non-engineers make out of college.