You are making the argument that whatever the company does is legal. That's fine and I don't disagree with it. It's not just a matter of not understanding the

You are making the argument that whatever the company does is legal. That's fine and I don't disagree with it. It's not just a matter of not understanding the entire legal contract. Someone could understand every single thing, but not realize, like you said above, "you won't be told about funding rounds if your contract doesn't mention it." They wouldn't even think about that because they aren't experts in that field. I've negotiated plenty of employment and IP agreements. I've found 100% willingness to, at the least, discuss them. But employee options grants must often be the same for everybody. And for a normal employee (as opposed to some C-level executive hire), once you start negotiating "in case I leave early I want more rights" you are signaling bad things. Really, all I'm telling people is "if you don't understand something fully, assume it's worthless." Your reaction is that, for some reason, employees should jump into the deep end of the pool and try to outsmart the VCs at the game they play every single day of their lives. And for what purpose? The vast majority of the time the options are going to end up at $0 anyway. I say no. Assume legalese is written in order to screw you over. Smile and accept the options because you might get lucky, but never ever stay late at the office imagining how they will make you rich.