[moonhorse]

True. Recently one of the sales directors at my company threatens the CEO to make him a "co-founder" (which basically means granting him a lot of option), or he will quit. He is responsible for half of our revenue, and he has been empire-building in his org for a while, so that his team answers to him, not the company. If we cut him off, very likely he (and a few key leaders) would deflect to our main competitor with our sales pipeline, and do some real damage. Very brutal situation for the CEO. I can not imagine learning how to handle this in any water-downed advice.