That kind of confusion happens because people don't understand how ownership really works. Stocks are not compensation in the sense as deferred bonus, but really more like ownership(albeit whatever small amount of it).

Say I went ahead and bought 10,000 shares in some company X for $10,000(A mutually agreed transaction, in which company accepted the money for a percentage of ownership). Now I just choose to buy-and-forget it for say 30 years. At the 31st year, the company makes it big, say the value of each share now is $1000. Now my shares are worth $1,000,000,000 . Imagine the current CEO of X, saying its `unfair` or `dead weight` or `undeserving` or whatever because the per unit of stock price went up.

Its the same thing with employees. The company just paid, stocks instead of money. How would it be any different than some investor putting in the money and buying the same amount of shares for that same amount of money and getting rich later?

If you really think your company is going to be very rich. You shouldn't even bother to pay in stocks. Just pay good salaries and be done with it. The trouble is most people know their companies are going to fail, so they have no qualms in giving imaginary points of ownership, only to realize later it could have all been theirs.

But keeping 50% (or whatever fraction) of a fortune is still great, and you don't have a lot of money now, so it does make sense to pay in stock even if you believe it'll be worth a lot more later.