Comment by philwelch

Does your company's 401k have matching, or is it just there for you to invest your own money? I worked at a place much like the one you describe and they did zero 401k match, just the ESOP, which is much as you describe with the outside auditors but still super sketchy in my opinion. If you don't do a 401k match but you do provide ESOP, then the only retirement benefit you actually provide is ESOP, which is frankly really shitty since it encourages your employees to make bad decisions. And outside auditor or not, a private company with no investors means the stock's value is, if anything, even more fictitious than a startup's valuation.