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["Austin, Roger" <rda AT rti.org>]

 Stock options have no value until you sell the stock. If I have some
say on how the company is doing, then I like stock options as part of a
benefits (not payment) package. The options should be there to retain
people, it should be offered as a perk, not as a part of pay for work.
Sort of like the mythical weeks of vacation that you don't have time to
take.
 My feeling is that many people are using these mythical shares of stock
as a basis for life long planning and that could be a mistake for
retirement. Although, the stories of those MS millionaires are nice to
hear. I bet there are oodles of geeks with lots of nice certificates
which can be valued for the paper.
 Roger in RTP (with no stock options so what do I know?)

mdthomas AT mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> Michael S Czeiszperger wrote:
> 
> >taking a $20,000-$60,000/year pay cut in real cash isn't
> >worth trading for the stock options.
> 
> Definitely true! Given a 1-10 odds on $200,000, you
> can only count that as (($200,000)*(1/10))=$20,000.
> So employing risk analysis, the stock options are a
> bad bet if you have to take a pay cut greater then
> $20,000 (and assuming that they payout will come within
> a year.) So:
<snip>