I was with you up til >For most people, the proper devaluation is going to be 100%. The author argues, correctly, that exchanging stock for its current market

I was with you up til >For most people, the proper devaluation is going to be 100%. The author argues, correctly, that exchanging stock for its current market value is a good deal. I agree (and I also agree with you that there is extra risk from having your own company's stock). But from none of this does it follow that we should discount stock units by 100%. That is like saying that an offer of $100 with 50/50 odds, would be worth 0, or would be worth zero if the coin toss was correlated with some life event. I think the problem with your reasoning is that you are treating risk as a concept of independent importance, while it is really a derived concept, with the fundamental concept being the utility from a probabilistic cash flow. >It's simply not correct that demanding cash is not an option. It's a business negotiation; anything is an option. You may not get all, or even any, of what you want, but categorically refusing to ask for it is seldom a winning strategy. Having been involved in these negotiations and seen people's salaries and stock grants (through legitimate means), I can say that trying to get more base salary is really hard, and not worth the time. Even if you got more salary, it would come at the cost of so much less stock that it wouldn't be worth it.