I have seen the jealousy part this first hand. I went to work for a startup in the late 90s during the first "bubble". I was one of the first employees on-board and the company was ramping up quickly. The plan, as with most Internet startups at the time, was to IPO and everyone would be happy.
Salaries and options were fairly quiet talk. No one really discussed them that I ever heard. Then we started preparing for the IPO. A few documents "accidentally" got included in a public filing. These documents included a list of current employees, their salaries, and the number of options they were granted. There was also one sales employee who had gotten an employment contract that was completely out of the norm of what others were getting paid. All of the sudden salaries and options became a major discussion point among employees.
To make matters worse, prior to the IPO it was determined that too many options had been granted and they needed to rain in the grants. The solution was an 1 for 8 reverse split (meaning that if you were initially granted 8000 options you now only had 1000). This was kind of an icing on the cake morale blow for employees. It didn't help when the stock soared at the IPO and people were comparing what they should have made with what they actually made.
Salaries and options were fairly quiet talk. No one really discussed them that I ever heard. Then we started preparing for the IPO. A few documents "accidentally" got included in a public filing. These documents included a list of current employees, their salaries, and the number of options they were granted. There was also one sales employee who had gotten an employment contract that was completely out of the norm of what others were getting paid. All of the sudden salaries and options became a major discussion point among employees.
To make matters worse, prior to the IPO it was determined that too many options had been granted and they needed to rain in the grants. The solution was an 1 for 8 reverse split (meaning that if you were initially granted 8000 options you now only had 1000). This was kind of an icing on the cake morale blow for employees. It didn't help when the stock soared at the IPO and people were comparing what they should have made with what they actually made.
EDIT - fixed typo