> Instead, you, who have been directly responsible for making the stock price rise so much that your options are costly to exercise I agree with what you're sa

> Instead, you, who have been directly responsible for making the stock price rise so much that your options are costly to exercise I agree with what you're saying, but to clarify, it'd be the taxes which are prohibitively costly, not the act of exercising the options themselves (your hard work doesn't change the price at which you exercise; it just changes the amount that is taxable). You may still be unable to afford the money it'd cost to exercise your full grant, but that figure was determined before you started working at the company, based on the size of your grant and the price at that time. (IANAL)