My previous employer justified a lower-than-average salary because “they were a poor cybersecurity startup and the lack of base pay is made up for with stock options”.
After a year, I got a new manager and things went sour. I was put on a PIP that was clearly designed for failure and I resigned when I landed a new job.
The other day I started the process to exercise these stock options. After signing the forms and setting up a wire transfer to pay for converting my options into actual shares, the founder of the company shows up in the mail thread, saying everything is off the table because I went to a competitor and now I'm in violation of the non-compete part of the contract.
I see this as a petty action because my new company is not mentioned anywhere as a competitor with my old company in industry tracker websites like crunchbase. Sure, there are overlaps, but with these kind of contractual enforcement, anyone who moves on in their area of expertise can be denied the benefits carrot they hovered over you. Old company also just pulled in $65M in funding so it's not like they don't have money. I'm not sure there is anything I can do. I tried to reason but they keep hiding behind the contract. Looking at this article, I feel more and more like I got suckered into a bad deal https://www.mystockoptions.com/articles/watch-for-noncompetes-and-other-restrictive-covenants-in-stock-grant-agreements