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I think if any employees were relying on that paper wealth... that's the problem.

IMO People need to understand what that really is (usually not much) rather than blame the company.

We're talking about a decade-old company with billions in revenue. If your job at AirBnb was your first chance to build any wealth, you never had the option to diversify. I don't think it's fair in that case to blame the employee.

I don't necessarily blame the management either. I do hope this reminds employees of private companies that their equity is only on paper until they are able to sell, and they should pressure management to give them the option.

Or, don’t get lured in by a company offering you huge compensation that you can’t actually touch (without realizing it’s a gamble).

To be fair, even the cash compensation at Airbnb was supposedly pretty high. But I’m not sure whether that’s much consolation now, after they’ve been dangling a golden carrot in front of employees for years.

Yeah that's kinda what I was getting at.

Education about what the value of something you can't sell seems a better route.

And granted, at Airbnb, maybe they all knew.

The point is that in this case there was real wealth that could have been released had they done an IPO

If not for COVID-19?

When should they have IPOed?

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