&gt; It must be pretty demotivating to spend your time at a small company busting ass to make the stock go from $20 to $21 while you look across the office at the early birds whose only current job description appears to be &quot;sit around and cash out my truckload of $0.01 stocks at $20 every two weeks&quot;.<p>It probably would be; if an early employee really is contributing so little, they probably ought to be terminated (if they&#x27;ve got stock from early options, they can keep selling it off for as long as they want, whether or not they are hanging around the office demotivating other people.)