Sorry if it confused you. You are right I am comparing the pricing of $20 using both with and without the split. Let me try again.
Let's say you have 32,000,000 shares and you want to raise $8,000,000. You would need to price the stock at $0.25 per share to guarantee that raise (32,000,000 * 0.25 = $8,000,000). Now let's say an employee has 8000 shares. At IPO their 8000 shares are worth $2000 if the stock opens at $0.25. Let's say the price goes up 4x, or to $1.00, that day. The gain is $6000 ($8000 - $2000).
To rectify the issue of the $0.25 opening price (major stock exchanges will not allow a stock to open that low and have minimum prices), the company decides to do a reverse split to reduce the outstanding shares and in turn raise the price of the stock. The company still wants to raise $8,000,000 so to adjust the number of shares outstanding (go from 32,000,000 to 400,000) they must do an 1 for 8 reverse split. If an employee had been granted 8000 shares when they started, they would, after the reverse split, only have 1000 shares.
After the reverse split and on IPO day the company now opens at $20 (8,000,000 / 400,000). Now let's say the price still goes up 4x, or to $80. The gain is still 4x, and the employee walks away with a $60,000 gain instead.
Where I think this confuses everyone is comparing the gain pre-split and post-split. You are right in that the gain is the same and in theory the employee neither lost or gained anything through the split. However, from an employee morale perspective the employee still views it as a loss. In the back of the employee's head they took the job under the premise of having 8000 shares and when the company IPOs they begin comparing what they should have had to what they really have after the split (8000 vs 1000 or $480,000 vs. $60,000).
The other part that I have left out is that with the reverse split your strike price goes up. So if you were originally brought on with 8000 shares and a $1 strike, you now have 1000 shares and a $8 strike. I didn't factor this in the math above in an attempt to make it easier to follow.
Hopefully that clarifies, sorry if I made that more confusing. You are 100% right the percentages and the gains are still the same in theory. It is a perspective that causes the loss of morale. That is why I was using my original comparison numbers. I am by no means an accountant or attorney so probably not the best person to explain the accounting aspect of a reverse split. :)