What risk/return are they expecting employees to accept? What risk/return are they willing to accept? Any advantage they give themselves over the employee, to me, means they don't care.
For larger companies, "You have to move to X place and work 1 day a week in-office, but also we just laid some people off and will give you no guarantee that you won't be laid off after moving" is a good example that's common right now. You know none of the leadership is getting that kind of deal, but they expect a % of their employees to deal with it.
For smaller companies, bad equity splits, or a lack of transparency around equity or company performance is probably most common. It's pretty common for startups to avoid telling the whole story to the rank and file to keep them unaware of the actual risk/reward they are taking, which then allows founders/leadership to pad the risk/reward they themselves get.
