Mistake? The clawback provisions were the executives' idea!

"We are sorry...that we got caught."

"...and that our PR firm wasn't good enough to squash the story."

They will follow the standard corporate 'disaster recovery' - say something to make it look like they're addressing it, then do nothing and just wait for it to fall out of the news cycle.

Honestly I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt on that, depending on their actions, because I'm sure they sign so many documents they just rely on their legal teams to ensure they're good.

There's absolutely no way that the officers of the company would be unaware of this.

First of all, it beggars belief that this whole thing could be the work of HR people or lawyers or something, operating under their own initiative. The only way I could believe that is if they deliberately set up a firewall to let people be bad cops while giving the C-suite plausible deniability. Which is no excuse.

But...you don't think they'd have heard about it from at least one departing employee, attempting to appeal the onerous terms of their separation to the highest authority in the company?

I'm not.

Hold up... Do you really think that a C-suite including career venture-capitalists who happen to be leading+owning stock in a private startup which has hit an estimated billion+ valuation are too naive/distracted to be involved in how that stock is used to retain employees?

In other words, I'm pretty sure the Ed Dillingers are already in charge, not Walter Gibbs garage-tinkerers. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atmQjQjoZCQ

Then why are they paid such obscene amounts of money?

Naïve enough to deserve the downvotes. (None from me; too late.)