Because during those 2nd, 3rd, 4th years those employees have much larger compensations than they would get on the market, and companies would rather keep the s

Because during those 2nd, 3rd, 4th years those employees have much larger compensations than they would get on the market, and companies would rather keep the stock if they don’t need to compensate employees that much to retain them. Many of the companies that are doing this are near-IPO or post-IPO trying to make their finances better. With GAAP, IIUC RSUs are recorded as expenses/count against shareholder equity at the vested price. So if you are a company trying to become GAAP profitable, even if you don’t claw back old appreciated grants, you can prevent the problem going forward/appease shareholders concerned about the impact on GAAP profitability by preventing appreciation. A long-dated RSU is a liability that can become expensive. Also personally I think getting highly appreciated RSU comp can introduce incentives like employees staying at a company longer than they should or want to (ie because they are burnt out or disengaged) since it may not be possible to find another job that compensates you nearly as much. And, it creates very large pay gaps - an entry level employee who joined 2 years ago may be making more than a staff level employee hired recently. I think RSUs are amazing for employees and the vesting/expected refresher details are a very important thing I look at when evaluating working somewhere. But many other people probably just look at the Year1 TC which doesn’t include appreciation or refreshers at all. I think enough people are like me that traditional RSUs won’t disappear any time soon, but I expect more companies to try to see what they can get away with in reducing equity comp.