> Employee options holders can't just decide to take a company public, so their interests can stay misaligned.
Not for long, though. The standard HN advice of "value options at $0" came about from a generation of employees conned by this, as you call it, misalignment.
Also, when you trap employees into heavy golden handcuffs, abuses of power in line management thrives (as what happened at Uber).
Tech workers now have a lot of power in negotiations and are using it to demand high salaries. If options were ever offered to me in lieu of salary I would simply say no.
Having a look at the revenue generated per person in Facebook vs General Electric we seem pretty shit at negotiating. The revenue per employee at GE is 400,000 at Facebook it's ~1,400,000. I'm not hearing FB paying people ~4 times the wages that GE does. Most I've heard is ~1.5 times for similar positions in similar locales, having friends in both.
We have convinced ourselves we're special snowflakes while the lucky and ruthless laugh all the way to the bank.
Not for long, though. The standard HN advice of "value options at $0" came about from a generation of employees conned by this, as you call it, misalignment.
Also, when you trap employees into heavy golden handcuffs, abuses of power in line management thrives (as what happened at Uber).