While I totally understand the frustration with taxes, vesting rules, etc. the entire problem, IMO, comes from the lack of liquidity in these shares.

These are "realized" gains to the IRS, but unrealizable to the employee because there's no way to sell the shares. That leads to large tax bills only payable in cash, which you can't get by selling the shares.

There are solutions to provide this liquidity in the works: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/d52b0487-b13...

As soon as these are real, most issues with stock option compensation go away.