100% agree. This is definitely a simple analysis meant to give people an idea what the value of their options is. I'm going to caveat the rest of this comment

100% agree. This is definitely a simple analysis meant to give people an idea what the value of their options is. I'm going to caveat the rest of this comment with my very little understanding of real options. I've only worked with a real option calculator once about 6 years ago. with that being said, here's my thinking on real options: You can do a much better analysis with a real options calculator, but you would have to make a lot of assumptions in your real option calculator about the different branches the individual could travel down at each node. At some point you could say that there is some very unlikely probability that this job allowed the person to travel down a path in 5 years that enabled them to start their own company and IPO'd that company. This would have an impact on the value of the options offered today, but I cannot imagine all of the possibilities of a real option calculator.