The pre-IPO company I worked at was acquired by a large public company. The deal was closed about two months after it was announced. Exercised options and vested RSUs were paid out at a certain price per share. Unvested RSUs and options were converted to options and stock of the acquiring company, at proportional unit and strike price, with the same vesting terms. People with vested, but unexercised options were give…
* The company was acquired for ~1B, but the amount of equity individual contributors had still came out to pretty paltry sums (~$20k over 4 years for more junior engineers, maxing out at maybe $200k over 4 years for staff+ level).
* To make up for the uncompetitive equity buyout, they offered retention packages that seemed good on the surface. However, they were all backloaded: either on a 10/20/30/40 schedule or a 0/0/50/50 depending on amount. Almost all employees left before vesting most of their retention package, and no matter how you calculated it no one was being paid fairly versus what they could have made working from a competitive public company from the get-go.