Somewhat of a nit - in many cases the remaining employees don't pay via dilution for a fired employee keeping his/her stock. The option pool is set up beforeha

Somewhat of a nit - in many cases the remaining employees don't pay via dilution for a fired employee keeping his/her stock. The option pool is set up beforehand and if the company sells or goes public and there is still equity left in the pool, there are a lot of things that can happen such as the founders or investors getting the chance to buy it out. Only if the company ends up expanding the options pool by allocating more shares would the employees (as well as founders) get diluted. And if the company is public they might do a buyback to expand the employee equity pool so nobody gets diluted.