It's against any competently worded lockup agreement.

"“Derivatives” is sort of a vague term, and there is a persistent folk belief that they have magic powers, that any legal or financial problem can somehow be solved by doing a derivative."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-08/lyft-i...

Lyft's common stockholder market standoff agreement doesn't bar hedging. See the s1.

But employees are forbidden to hedge. Source: am one.

It's a tough call to make. By the time options came out, puts were extremely expensive relative to calls due to shorting pressure driving up hard to borrow fees. Aside from how bearish you had to be to justify buying them, you also need a lot of capital you might not have.

Besides, any current employee is barred from trading options by the insider trading policy.

Contractual limitations mentioned by a couple other people aside, options aren't even available until 5 days after IPO. http://www.theoptionsguide.com/criterias-to-list-stock-optio...

They are almost certainly not allowed by their employment contract.

You cannot trade options during your lockup.