But the plan should be structured so that what you earn is in line with the benefit you provide to the company. Making it arbitrarily harder to benefit from what you've already earned is unnecessarily cruel.
This is a big difference between aligning incentives and retroactively punishing behavior you don't like.
Have you earned your equity just because you put in the time, or have you earned it when you get to the finish line (when the stock is able to be traded for actual $)?
These tension between these two points of view is the source of the consternation in this area.
This is a big difference between aligning incentives and retroactively punishing behavior you don't like.