"I had 28 hours to either come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn’t have to save half of my stock, or I could sign the agreement as-is and avo

"I had 28 hours to either come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn’t have to save half of my stock, or I could sign the agreement as-is and avoid losing half of my already-diminished stake" Can anyone unpack this statement a bit more? What is "already diminished stake" in reference to? Is this saying that Github made some kind of offer that would let him keep half his vested options without putting any money up, like converting them to NSOs or something? I'd really like to understand how companies handle exits like this. Certainly it's a valid perspective that employees are entitled to 100% of their vested options. But, devil's advocate: There is also the counterpoint that pre-IPO valuations are very high and based on special terms given to private investors, so maybe there is a rationale to negotiating a discount on pre-IPO exits. I would like to understand if Github acted out of good faith here to any degree, i.e. where they were not contractually obligated to. I also understand Holman noted he hasn't "made a dime" from the company outside his salary, which would be completely f'd up. But it's unclear to me whether that's merely in reference to liquidity or if he actually walked away with no stock. It sounds like he did walk away with some stock as a result of a negotiated agreement with Github.