Okay, reality check: the most substantive part of this change is shifting 4-year vest to 1-year vest. This means 75% of the upside an employees stock compensat

Okay, reality check: the most substantive part of this change is shifting 4-year vest to 1-year vest. This means 75% of the upside an employees stock compensation is taken away. That's the main effect here. The rest of the talk about percentile pay comp targets among peer companies is rounding error by comparison. If FAANG had adopted this structure over the last 13 years, understand the number of rank and file engineers that became millionaires would have been reduced by an order of magnitude or more. This is just another way for VCs and finance in general to use their knowledge and positioning to skim all the upside on fast-growing companies. It's one thing for a company to change their compensation policy and spin it in the best possible light—I don't like it, but it's just one company and I can at least hope the market teaches them a lesson. However for a VC like Fred Wilson to try to paint this as an unequivocal good is disgusting. Essentially this "golden handcuffs" argument is saying that rank and file employees who earn above market due to betting their labor long-term on a single company are a risk that should not be allowed.