[danielweber]

This advice could be risky. If they assign stock to you and you exercise it and there is any different between the current value and your strike price, that can be exactly what triggers the AMT.

If you exercise and sell at the same time, you will pay short-term income taxes, but without any AMT to worry about.

[harryh]

When the stock is assigned to you then there should be no difference between the current value and your strike price. That would be very unusual. That is why I was saying that waiting until you vest might not be a good idea because by then you might have an AMT issue.

I agree that exercising and selling can be a good strategy but we're (mostly) talking about private companies here where that may not be an option due to a lack of liquidity.