If a company grants you stock options as part of your compensation, you need still need to pay to get the stock. That's called exercising the options. If you l

If a company grants you stock options as part of your compensation, you need still need to pay to get the stock. That's called exercising the options. If you leave the company, there is a limited window of time to exercise the option. If you don't exercise it, the stock gets returned back to the company. This post is favoring that window being long and is responding to blog post favoring that window being short.