[save_ferris]

One of the biggest gripes I have with the current state of equity for employees is that it's treated like compensation while not being legally protected like compensation.

A concrete example. I was courted by a company a couple of years ago to join their engineering team and I was pretty set on joining the company until I spoke with a former employee who told me that this company had reneged on giving him the option to purchase his ISOs because they didn't like that he was leaving after two years.

That's completely unacceptable behavior for a company, and it completely changed the way I look at equity. A company can't come at for my already-cashed paychecks, but they can absolutely prevent me from purchasing my options for pretty much any reason.

[lock-free]

ISOs are bonus compensation and treated a bit differently under the law than non qualified options, but point taken.

[jbay808]

Were the options already vested at that point?

[scottjg]

is that legal? if they issued you options... you have the "option" to purchase them?

[lock-free]

It's called a clawback (1) and as a policy are pretty common. I wouldn't assume we have the full story from GP, it could be the startup screwed someone over, it could be the person did things that triggered a clawback. Not all are enforceable.

(1) https://www.mystockoptions.com/content/how-does-a-clawback-w...

[save_ferris]

The problem is that even if a company illegally triggers a clawback, it's a civil matter and requires the employee to pony up for legal action against the company. That might be worth it if you're already certain that your equity has significant value, but most people aren't going to litigate for relatively small amounts of stock in small startups with uncertain futures.