hnbad answered this much more thoroughly than I’m able. I would just like to add that in my experience stock options and grants has been an excellent way of pretending to pay me more then they actually pay. It feels like they are giving me a lot extra until you actually look at the numbers. And I bet a lot of workers get fooled by this. For me it feels like an exercise in cognitive dissonance, that is my employer is trying manufacture a cognitive dissonance in my brain which favors them.

Of course owning these stocks gives me nothing over their monitory value, so having them benefits me nothing over having an interest account with equal interest rate. So I just look at them as a bonus pay with additional headaches (moving money out of the stock market is harder then to cash in a normal check). And as while the power imbalance exists between workers and bosses, I would rather just get paid in regular salaries without the extra complexities.