Not wrong on first deal, IF

it was genuinely left up to him. What I think is fair is the following:

Joe works hard for a year. Joe's performance review comes up. Joe is told by his manager (who presumeably knows more about the details of the company) that the "stock is going up". He tells Joe that he can have a $1,000 bonus or he can not take the bonus and instead be granted options which will mature in 6 months. "By then," the manager assures, "you'll make substantially more money than you would by taking the bonus." Joe makes his decision.

What's unfair:

Joe's company only gives stock and options for performance bonuses.

M$ has always paid employees around 25% less than market - rationalized by their lucrative stock option plans. That's a little slimy, imo. The company gets 25% more productivity than they paid for NOW, while the employee gets a "promise". I know its uncommon to believe this, but you really can lose money in stock.

I agree with you that you can lose money on stock options. Hell, I've had it happen to me. I got stock options at $6 a share and the stock was trading at close to $4.

But then again, I've also worked for company that gave an entire $20 for a bonus. One I worked for offered no bonuses, period. Some offer stock options.

And, there's been companies that have (due to economic distress) offered employees solely stock options (no paychecks). They couldn't afford the payroll. Some employees left. Some stayed. Eventually the company got out of the hole and went public. An admin. assistant calculated that, when she cashed in her options, she had been making over a hundred dollars an hour.

What I think you want is the best of both worlds. Take a company and offer both low-risk and high-risk payment options, choosable by the employee. It may work, I don't know. But, I suspect that such an option probably wouldn't work. If I'm taking a high-risk payment option, I'm not going to be happy if you're sticking on your tail saying it's not your job during an economic crisis. Then again, like some Microsoft temp workers, you might not be happy if you're making minimum wage and I'm suddenly a millionaire.

Besides, if you don't like the options your company is providing, look elsewhere. There are other jobs on the market.

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