Ugh… this is very bad.
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Sure… he’ll let us know in…
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Money.
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Don’t forget power and ego.
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I had stock options where the market price never reached the grant price, before the options expired. In the run up to the expiration, though, the company (or its broker) kept “offering” to sell me the options at the grant price (i.e. more than they were worth). There was another company in Austin, right around the time of the dot-com bubble or maybe right after, that was really pushing stock options to prospective hires. I don’t think they ever got to an IPO, much less to any grant price.
The predecessor company where I worked did do a grant where, once it vested, I actually made a little money. & I know of people who went to some other company (not any of those I deacribed above) where they did very well from stock options – at least on paper. But other than that, I’ve come to see stock options as Monopoly money. Which isn’t fair, because Monopoly money has an actual use &, therefore, actual value.
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I’ve never needed to know how stock options work.
Can you sell while you still work for the company? Privately or on public exchanges? If so, I assume that along with your login and door access, they lock down your shares right away as part of the layoff procedure?
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I could & did, the only thing I had to wait for was that the options had vested (in that case, it was 6 or 12 mos. after the grant). They traded on whatever exchange the company’s stock was listed, but we had to go thru whatever broker was holding the options. That was not yet over the internet, so on the day of vesting, we all called in at once & it took all day. But it worked (that time).
I assume that along with your login and door access, they lock down your shares right away as part of the layoff procedure?
Not long afterward, that company merged* with another, & they did a new “founders’ grant” for those who were employed on the day of the merger. I got laid off a few years later & did, in fact, keep the options – I may have misremembered & perhaps they had, indeed, vested by then. But they never reached the grant price before they expired.
*It wasn’t really a merger, & I imagine “merger” is really always synonymous with “buyout.” The other company simply bought ours, & used a new name afterward. The culture (if not all of the mgm’t.) at the “new” company was that of the bigger one that bought us.
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