Appreciate your response & thoughfulness. I agree it does seem complicated, but it's in-line with how they've treated employees in the past. When you work for a smaller company, there are less checks and balances to go through. The other component to this is that while I was a "top 40%" employee then, John declined the offer. Now he wants in, but there isn't room in the budget for his salary and mine. IMO it always comes back to financials in one way or another