Consider the part that comes after the full grant. The opportunity to conditionally back-load could be used in creative ways to further align everyone’s incentives.
Skilled tacticians are really good at what they do, and they want to make meaningful impact with their skills. For some kinds of skilled tacticians, the thing they are extremely skilled at is more valuable at the start than at the end. If and when this is true, a 4/11 is far less appealing than something on a shorter time horizon.
Footnotes
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shorthand for the industry-standard equity package: X number of shares distributed evenly over 4 years with a 1-year cliff (no vesting before 1 year, and at 1 year you get a lumped percentage of the total distribution). If you quit, you lose any shares that have not yet been distributed (i.e. vested). ↩