I was lucky. Draining my bank account to exercise my stock options was only tenable because I knew I could borrow money from family, or from Ian. Some of my coworkers, largely women in nontechnical roles whose work had been foundational to the company, but whose salaries did not allow them to save much in the city with the highest cost of living in the country, had been offered generous stock grants that they were unable to exercise after they left the company. Some women, I had heard, were promised extensions on their exercise windows, only to have the extensions vetoed by the board after the grants had expired. The acquisition was a once-in-a-lifetime bonanza. It passed them by.

Flat structure, meritocracy, non-nonnegotiable offers. Systems do work as designed.