Typically movie stars negotiate a tiny % of gross revenue in their contract. They used to negotiate for % of profit, but studios got very good at fiddling with the numbers for the film until a successful movie had nearly no profit.<p>I don&#x27;t see why that can&#x27;t be done for software engineers. That is essentially dividends though, and it&#x27;s obvious why growth companies don&#x27;t want to do that. But it&#x27;s also not clear that stock options have the intended motivating effect (it&#x27;s not even clear that increases in salary or some kind of profit sharing would have the intended effect either[1])<p>I think it&#x27;s clear that stock options are sub-optimal for the intended purpose, but it&#x27;s not obvious to me how to fix that.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc</a>