> In some companies, the initial job contracts are misleading, and mention a nominal price of $0.01.

Is he suggesting that the initial job contract does _not_ state the exercise price, and relies on the employee mistakenly thinking that $0.01 is the exercise price?

This seems like it stems for a culture that we have of employees (or potential employees) just never asking questions about contracts that are presented to them. And I think there's a lot of employers that expect that to be the case too. I've once had a manager tell me with a straight face when I requested changes to a contract "I'm sorry, I can't get this changed. You'll just have to sign it." My reply of "I don't believe it's in my interests to sign that" was not something that was in his world-view.