I have never retaliated against employees who gave me competing offers; some times I haven't been able to meet them and they left, but every time I did meet the

I have never retaliated against employees who gave me competing offers; some times I haven't been able to meet them and they left, but every time I did meet them, people stayed. The people who stayed basically pulled forward a stock grant that was coming anyway, and increased this year's raise while decreasing it a fair bit for the next two years. I've always been explicit that this is what's happening; the area under the income curve does end up larger, but not by a large amount. Of course the option value of having a grant vs. hoping for a grant is worth something, too. DVassallo's $160k bump across one year's W2 is much larger than I've ever seen granted.