Why would they hire someone for COO and not give this person equity? Sympathy for the devil and all but these people were asking for something bad to happen.
I find this sort of bonkers. Basically they all have contracts saying they'll get equity at the next round ... and the company is profitable and the CEO has no intention to every raise another round. So he currently owns 100% of the company: "As a result, even though it looks like a typical venture capital funded company, all of Toptal’s stock is in the hands of one person, co-founder and CEO Taso Du Val. Even Du Val’s co-founder and colleague for eight years, [redacted], has no shares."
That said, I do wonder whether there's some bigger story in the background (since [redacted] is referred to as co-founder in the Information article, and is getting sued in the parent)
This is probably not the most stable foundation upon which to build a company.
Most businesses have a fixed number is of equity owners, including service business like Toptal. In most businesses like that, if you get any equity at all, it'd be unusual that you could keep the equity if you leave the company.