Misleading title and premise: The author makes it seem as if something will be explained for people who are not 'financially-savvy', but nothing is explained. In fact it is made more complex. Which is fine, but still it was kind of misleading. Solid advice to get financial advice nonetheless.

Can someone explain this part to my/some-of-us like I am five?:

"Which muppets advised them to spend hard-earned cash to exercise a non-liquid, highly volatile financial instrument? There is no world where the (relatively) small tax breaks involved justify the expected value equation, given that Good Technology was nowhere near exit."

I have no idea what it says here.

There is a nice glossary of terms here: https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation