The 90 day stock options exercise window should be made illegal. It should be 10 years or indefinite. Employees, like the author here, earned their stock options. It's wrong that they get stolen back just because its an "industry norm" established by greedy assholes in the 1980s.

The author of this post played an important role in GitLab's early development. They deserve to have their $1 million payday now that it is public, regardless of how they felt in the months after being fired.

They were robbed by GitLab's unethical stock options terms.

Employees also get screwed when they, under time pressure, exercise stock options which then go on to be worthless. And when they simply can't afford to exercise options. It's a huge flaw in the current startup system.

It would be great if YC used its muscle to actually fix this problem. Startup employees are getting screwed by this every day, in many cases by YC companies.