Twitter says it won't reprice stock options to help keep employees — but Jack Dorsey still wants to give them $100 million of his shares

Twitter spends a lot of time telling Wall Street that it is going to improve its product and expand its user base.

Today, Twitter had a different message for Wall Street: We're not going hand out new, cheap stock options. Unless you let us.

And unlike other messaging Twitter has sent to Wall Street, this one seemed to work! Twitter shares are up 2 percent today.

The details: Twitter told investors, via a proxy filing this morning, that it wants to "prohibit the repricing of stock options" without approval from shareholders. That is: It won't tell Twitter employees whose options allow them to buy shares for, say, $30 that they can now buy them for $14.40 — Twitter's current price.

That's the kind of move the tech industry used to use a lot of in the old days, so that companies could try to hang on to employees even as the value of their shares declined.

Then, the strategy became unpopular. And a Twitter rep says the company hasn't been re-pricing options, anyway — today's statement just formalizes the practice.

But Twitter does have other tools to boost the morale of workers whose stock has become much less valuable. The company has been handing out more restricted stock units, as well as cash, to employees — and Twitter doesn't have any plans to change that practice.

And CEO Jack Dorsey has said he still wants to donate 6.8 million shares of his own Twitter stock — that's worth about $100 million at today's prices — to employees. In order to do that, he'll need the go-ahead from Twitter shareholders at their annual meeting next week.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via