That it's the unvested portion definitely makes a difference... But to be ethical you really can't just take unvested shares from employees because they have "t

That it's the unvested portion definitely makes a difference... But to be ethical you really can't just take unvested shares from employees because they have "too much", which is how the WSJ tells the story. Sounds like Pincus gave performance-based pay with a pretty transparent system, which should have worked well. Employees must know how management sees their performance, otherwise you're destined to have a bad breakup. If the story is accurate (hopefully it's not as who'd want to ever work at Zynga after this?) then the lack of stock for new hires was a management issue, and should be resolved from management, the investors and the board's pockets. After all, each investor saw the cap table before putting money in.