Xbox's 'Golden Handcuffs' Are Screwing Over Laid Off Workers

[misk@sopuli.xyz]

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.07.07-233349/https://aftermath.site/xbox-layoffs-microsoft-vested-unvested-shares-stocks

[bobr@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org]

I don't understand what this article is about.

I also get RSUs at my job. Every "performance review cycle" together with salary increase I am awarded N shares that will vest over some period of time (multiple years). A few times a year those shares are vested, and after they are vested I actually own them and can sell them (or hold them for as long as I want). So they are part of my compensation package. If I get laid off (or quit) I will obviously not receive my unvested shares. The same as I will not receive any salary that my company would pay me if I continued working there.

So I don't understand how complaining about not receiving unvested shares is different from complaining about not receiving salary that you would get in the future by continuing working for the company...

[arcane2077@sh.itjust.works]

Yep, it’s about Luke, Kotaku’s Aftermath’s resident pessimistic moron, discovering RSUs. That’s about it

[rhynoplaz@lemmy.world]

That's dirty. If the company is deciding that you can't stay around long enough to vest those stocks, they should pay them out. There should never be a reward for dumping people.

[masterspace@lemmy.ca]

When you understand how RSUs work and what you're signing up for there's nothing inherently wrong with rewarding someone for years of service.

However, their structure / terminology is inherently misleading and manipulative.

A company could just give you stock at each performance review. It doesn't need to give you magic shares that need to be incubated before they hatch, it could just give you the actual shares they want to pay you at each point.

They don't because that would expose that they're actually giving you nothing in the first several years, and they want you to think you own part of the company when you don't.

Again, when you understand what they're actually offering then you go in eyes wide open, but they are intentionally trying to deceive people into thinking they're getting a reward earlier than they actually are.

[masterspace@lemmy.ca]

I do think it's a bad article because it's just someone who's flabbergasted by the concept and clearly hasn't spent much time thinking about it or understanding it, but RSUs are deceptive by nature. A company could just give you the stock flat out in the future. The only reason it gives you the promise of future stock now is the corporate equivalent of 'dont worry baby, I know I might mistreat you now but il l clean myself and do better by you in 3 ... maybe 4 years'.

The whole concept exists just to trick employees into thinking they own stock when they don't, and while, arguably, at this point, most tech company employees probably understand that mechanic and value it appropriately, it doesn't mean it's necessary.

[mindbleach@sh.itjust.works]

The magic word is prorated.

If getting 99% of the way to something comes out to 0% of the payoff, that's fraud waiting to happen. A promise unfulfilled.