I can only speak for my own experience, but everyone I have ever known has always been screwed by options. As such, I automatically assign a value of $0 to any options attached to an employment offer. You can pretend that yours are worth more thanks to your unique structuring as much as you like, but thanks to everyone else in the industry, you will still have to convince your employee that you are not just spewing delusion at him.
While I can't prove it, I believe I was once fired just to prevent my options from vesting.
As an employee, you're really better off with zero options and a higher salary 99.9% of the time. But that means the owners have to sell more of their equity to make payroll.
If you want to be a nice guy and keep the early employees eligible for big payouts, take your share of the buyout/IPO and give them bonuses out of that. No one trusts the option plans any more.
While I can't prove it, I believe I was once fired just to prevent my options from vesting.
As an employee, you're really better off with zero options and a higher salary 99.9% of the time. But that means the owners have to sell more of their equity to make payroll.
If you want to be a nice guy and keep the early employees eligible for big payouts, take your share of the buyout/IPO and give them bonuses out of that. No one trusts the option plans any more.