I was working at a private advertising tech company in the sf bay area and part of my compensation was in stock in the company. The idea was that if they sold the company, we'd all get a share of the profits, or so I thought.
4 years in, they laid off their first employee after 7 years, the nicest woman ever, with 1 week severance. I quit immediately after that, realizing what kind of job it was. A few years later, my shares in the company were written off in the shiftiest way I've heard of.
The owners of the company bought the company from themselves for the exact value of their own shares plus their investors shares, leaving employee shares worthless. All the people who had been “sharing” in their success were deliberately excluded from the value in the company. I couldn't understand how people were still working there after that.
tl;dr: company owners sold the company to themselves, deliberately screwing their employees over for profit.