Comment by hackernoteng

I think all this is OK. The problem is when it's not transparent. Then you have early employees (even some naive founders) with a lot of stock/options who assume they are going to be compensated with the exit. Then it's quite a shock when they aren't. As a veteran of such things (both successful and unsuccessful exits), I make sure to educate my fellow engineers on how these things work and what their realistic expectations should be.