Vesting of options is supposed to be an incentive for employees to not quit, not an incentive for employers to fire people before it happens. Trust is an itera

Vesting of options is supposed to be an incentive for employees to not quit, not an incentive for employers to fire people before it happens. Trust is an iterated game, and while I'd not argue that you can't fire someone close to their shares vesting, I'd like to be fairly clear on shouldn't. If it's close enough that the political implications are obvious to the owner, it's close enough that the political implications are obvious to the other employees too. And so it becomes a political question. In a non-iterated game, or one that only involved the employer and the employee, if someone has reached the point of being let go then there's no particular reason not to let them go, vesting or no vesting. But in an iterated game, and when other employees can see and make inferences about what's happening, it absolutely makes sense to be seen to be generous. You are setting expectations on future behaviour that will make a difference to how the next rounds of the game are played.