Your code is not intellectual property, though. Neither is the janitor's cleaning. A better analogy is you sold a company to Microsoft and retained 10% equity

Your code is not intellectual property, though. Neither is the janitor's cleaning. A better analogy is you sold a company to Microsoft and retained 10% equity (or any other number, who cares), and Microsoft decided to whatever you're owed in dividends. Intellectual Property is just equity in little businesses, where each song, book, movie, what have you is a little business of its own. The writer is not an employee. He never was. He was contracted to build a business, and was entitled to <50% of its equity. Disney is keeping that equity for himself. Does that elicit any empathy with you, or do you still not understand how this works?