How does the possibility of employees becoming independently wealthy factor in to determining compensation for star performers?  Let's say that I have personally determined that $3-5 MM of assets properly invested would earn me enough to live off of for the rest of my life.<p>If I earn $2 MM a year in salary, then in a short period of time, I could quit, retire, and work on whatever (open source, nonprofit) technical projects interest me.  Companies vest stock for this reason, and I think Google does an admirable job of creating a college atmosphere full of world-class talent to retain passionate employees.<p>But not every company can employ Vint Cerf and Guido van Rossum and prepare gourmet meals.<p>Should a company try to keep their star employees under such an "independently wealthy" threshold?  I imagine that Henry Ford, even paying twice the prevailing wages, didn't need to worry about this issue.  2x the average wage probably wasn't enough to quickly retire back then.