It sounds like the sign on bonus she’s referring to vests over 4 years. Unless I’m mistaken, this is an initial stock grant and you only get the full amount if you stay with the company for 4 years.
I really think there should be 2 different vesting terms - 1 in case I quit (can be longer term in this case) - and another in case I get fired (shorter vesting period IMO). Call it early termination.
What startup was it that was discussed here a while ago, where the founder was describing shareholding ex-employees as "dead weight" who didn't deserve the shares since they were no longer working there? I'm a guessing similar mentality was at play here.
Say I went ahead and bought 10,000 shares in some company X for $10,000(A mutually agreed transaction, in which company accepted the money for a percentage of ownership). Now I just choose to buy-and-forget it for say 30 years. At the 31st year, the company makes it big, say the value of each share now is $1000. Now my shares are worth $1,000,000,000 . Imagine the current CEO of X, saying its `unfair` or `dead weight` or `undeserving` or whatever because the per unit of stock price went up.
Its the same thing with employees. The company just paid, stocks instead of money. How would it be any different than some investor putting in the money and buying the same amount of shares for that same amount of money and getting rich later?
If you really think your company is going to be very rich. You shouldn't even bother to pay in stocks. Just pay good salaries and be done with it. The trouble is most people know their companies are going to fail, so they have no qualms in giving imaginary points of ownership, only to realize later it could have all been theirs.
Vesting is fine as a concept. Just understand that whatever dollar amount to they're telling you is something you have the chance to earn over a period of time. It's not a bonus.
I think there is merit in having immediate vesting in the case of no-fault dismissal. It's the company choosing to terminate the contract unliaterally, the employee has fulfilled his part of the deal.