That's a terribly complicated question. Do I like them personally, as a recipient of them? Sometimes. At some employers, I've gotten quite lucky with them. The joke I make is: the solid cherry kitchen cabinets and granite countertop were bought from XYZ company stock options.
But we need to recognize them for what they are: a part of your pay package. As are things like good health insurance programs (not so much an issue outside the US), retirement plans, and so on. But unlike the things that tie you to the company on a day-to-day basis, they tend to have a long-term effect. If I quit tomorrow, I know that my salary will stop very quickly (typically anywhere between 0 hours and a few months afterwards, depending on local customs and laws). But I still have the stock from my employer, I can still exercise stock options. But more importantly, I may have to look at the option vesting schedules: If I stay around for another 6 weeks, I might get another big packet of options, so let me not quit today but wait a little bit. And six weeks from now, there is the next vesting date, so I'll stay a little longer. Iterate that, and you'll end up tied to your job forever. Once, when I quit XYZ company, I told people: What is my sanity worth to me? About ABC K$ in stock options. There's a reason that options are called "golden handcuffs": If you stay longer, you will get more than proportionally richer. I have a friend who managed to stay for three years after a nasty takeover of his company (most others quit, the new management was difficult); he ended up seriously rich (the number of airplanes he bought is larger then the number of fingers on one hand, and some have multiple engines). Now, did it cause him massive hair loss? Absolutely.
The other thing we need to recognize is that stock (in all forms) is actually cheaper than cash pay for the company. Investors will typically overlook a small dilution of the value of their stock by issuing new stock for options; for large quantities, companies typically do buybacks. So if you get two job offers, one being A: $100K in cash plus $50K in options (expected value per year), and another one B: $150K in cash, you need to understand that the second company actually values you higher.
Then there is the risk factor (a.k.a. statistical distribution). Getting back to the previous example: If you work for company B, you will have $150K in the bank, every year. At company A, you will have $100K. You are likely to have $150K (that's the mean expected value). You might have $250K or way more too. Can you survive on $100K? Do you have a plan to do something useful with $250K if you get lucky? If getting only $100K means you will starve and live on the street, then don't go to work at A. On the other hand, if you can comfortable live on half that, but if you get $250K this year something wonderful happens (I have a friend who is literally waiting for a pay raise, so he can propose marriage and start a family), then go work for company A. One problem here is that most people are not capable of evaluating risk and statistics objectively. Many will go work at A (because of the theoretical chance of a huge payout), even though B is really the better deal, if you take into account that cash flow tends to lead to non-linear (inefficient) spending.
Finally, we have to distinguish different forms of stock pay, which most people simply lump together:
Employee stock purchase: Every month, you take 10% of your cash pay, and buy stock with it, which the company sells you to at a 15% discount (these are typical numbers), and at the stock price from a year ago. The stock is yours, but you get it at a good discount.
Stock grants: In addition to your monthly pay, the company says: for the next 5 years, we will give you 500 shares on each January 1 for free, and the current value is $100 per share. Stock grants can be performance based: Only if your code is bug-free and runs fast, or only if you sell 1000 widgets per week, or only if you make our stock price go up by 50%.
Stock options: Today's stock price is $100. For the next 5 years, on every January 1st, we allow you to buy 5000 shares at $100. Now, if a year from now the stock price is $80, you simply ignore it, and don't buy them. But if the stock price is $120, you just made some money. And if something wonderful has happened and the stock price is $1000, you just got pretty rich. Again, stock options can be non-qualified or performance based.
The difference between stock grants and stock options is the leverage: stock options emphasize small fluctuations in the stock price. Say in the example the stock price alternates between $90 and $110 every year: In the stock grant example, it's just a pretty smooth flow of cash; in the stock option example, you make good money when the price goes up, but don't lose money when it goes down.
And one thing that can completely up-end this whole discussion is taxation. In the US, that is ridiculously complicated, both for the company (for which stock options have become less desirable compared to purchase plans and outright grants over the last decade), and for the employee.
Personally, I think stock-based pay is mostly a good thing, because it reminds each and every employee that the legal purpose of a company is to make money, and that everyone at the company (from the CEO to the janitor) is legally required to work to increase the stock price in the long term. But stupid employees sometimes get too much in love with stock, and do dumb things. And employers have been known to exploit that and deliberately underpay people by giving them large stock packages of dubious value. This is very typical of startups: We will pay you little, but here is 3% of a company ... which is likely to be worthless.
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