Semi-related situation: I worked for a privately held company years ago that is just now getting around to issuing the stock options I was offered back then. They'd promised 1.5% with some incentives for performance that I ultimately didn't achieve (in part due to a major project that came up in the interim, where my performance was great for the company), so the 1.5% seems fair to me.
The company has grown a lot since I left, and they want to issue stock options to everyone to whom they've been promised since then. Now they're talking about offering me 0.75%, reasoning that, if I had been given the options four years ago, the share would be diluted by the present round of options anyway.
The fact that it would be diluted makes sense; what concerns me is the strike price. I probably would have gotten a lower price four years ago, right? I don't understand the concepts enough to know if the math is correct, but to get a fair deal here, do I need to ask for a lower strike price for the adjusted share of 0.75%, or ask for 1.5% as promised if I'm getting the same strike price as everyone else?
Either way, it's probably not as good an investment as index funds, but as long as they're offering, I'd like to get the deal we agreed on.