It's obvious why companies don't do it: it removes the so-called golden handcuffs. People keep pretending an employee's inability to leave a successful company

It's obvious why companies don't do it: it removes the so-called golden handcuffs. People keep pretending an employee's inability to leave a successful company because of the strike price and tax issues is a negative rather than one of the highlights of this compensation strategy from management's perspective. Oh, and employees not exercising and returning shares to the option pool doesn't hurt any of the people with the power to make decisions about it either. viz various CTOs on here defending this practice (not in this thread, but I've seen them on HN. I'm not linking one in particular because I don't want to call anyone out and I appreciate his honesty on here.)