Except that as I was leaving, the company was just getting set up with eTrade, and within a month after my leaving, there was no other way to exercise options. Except that eTrade had no way of getting in touch with me to send me things like authentication codes to activate my account, because although I've been actively corresponding with my old company via email, they somehow weren't able to communicate that key piece of info to eTrade. All eTrade had was an email address that was invalid when they received it. I called about it every week for nearly three months, and it was only after I mentioned that preventing me from exercising my options was not only actionable, but also would look bad when coupled with the fact that they've had unbelievably high executive turnover in the past 12 months...they suddenly became reasonable.
And then I found out that a shipment of wine that I had been getting every quarter had been sent to my work address, rather than the Pirate's. And that my old work accepted it. So now poor
I'm shocked because the individual people in that company are smart. I've seen them solve complex problems and use tools and program VCRs and everything.