That's kind of a different thing altogether though, really. The "fuck you money" generally comes only in the case of a liquidity event, such as IPO, sale, etc.

That's kind of a different thing altogether though, really. The "fuck you money" generally comes only in the case of a liquidity event, such as IPO, sale, etc. To my ear, there are compelling arguments both ways. Assuming a large company, employees 1-x should probably enjoy some of that fuck you money, but clearly, at some point there's a falloff. If my company sold tomorrow, I would not have in any way been involved in its sale. Same with an IPO. Our company has been around for years, sells expensive software, has millions in revenue, and I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not we've turned a profit yet. Assuming we have, it was probably done only last year, which meant that somebody was footing the bills of a multi million dollar company for a decade or so, and that person wasn't me. If somebody was spending millions on an idea that took a decade to pay off, then absolutely they deserve more money in a liquidity event than I do, and I'd be a fool to begrudge them that. That said, not all companies are created equally, and many get to market / revenue / profitability at different timetables with different employee counts, so YMMV. That said, the notion of 'fair' is so abstract in this scenario then I think it's safe to assume that it is universally convoluted. Hard to pin down exactly what is or isn't fair without internal knowledge I don't have.