You withhold the shares until after a waiting period. You stay a year and don't screw up royally, you get invited to the employee participation program. Imagine that? Give the poor something to look forward to? Preposterous, right?
And then they give that stock price is mostly vibes based had little relation to performance, and it's unreliable monopoly money unless you happen to own a lot of it so it can be collateral in a loan.
Additionally stock based compensation creates incentives to work towards raising the stock price not actually performance.
All of that is why back when Hewlett-Packard was still run by Hewlett and Packard they banned stock plans and instead introduced profit sharing
