So do the execs, for what it’s worth, who not only suffer from lockdowns, but also often are legally required to announce their trades in advance.

Frankly, I never found lockdowns to be really onerous at all. You can’t really time the market anyway.

Lockouts apply to every employee, including executives.

Having multiple windows each year to sell your stock/options at fair market prices is a luxury that very, very few people working at startups gets. This is a ridiculous thing to complain about. For the vast majority of people having 4 trading windows per year is more than enough to adjust their portfolio based on their financial strategy.

The lockout periods are quite short. You can buy and sell more than 2/3 of the time. You can also set up an autosale system which sells as soon as you vest regardless of whether you are in a lockout period.