It&#x27;s obvious why companies don&#x27;t do it: it removes the so-called golden handcuffs.<p>People keep pretending an employee&#x27;s inability to leave a successful company because of the strike price and tax issues is a negative rather than one of the highlights of this compensation strategy from management&#x27;s perspective.  Oh, and employees not exercising and returning shares to the option pool doesn&#x27;t hurt any of the people with the power to make decisions about it either.  viz various CTOs on here defending this practice (not in this thread, but I&#x27;ve seen them on HN.  I&#x27;m not linking one in particular because I don&#x27;t want to call anyone out and I appreciate his honesty on here.)