His point is, that you have to assume that will happen quite often. We're simply not equipped to forsee all the legal and financial risks of having stock options. We've seen too many ways that employees have been taken advantage of. You can't simply "trust" that if the company does well, you'll do well.

That's the implicit suggestion behind the entire options thing. Especially given that almost no individual developer has a bargaining position strong enough to demand the safeguards that would avoid those problems.

Look, people still gets big payouts, even if many get stiffed. One can still rationally take the leap even knowing that the game is rigged.