This was a job posting on Linkedin, in the software industry.
The rules are that you can sell up to 30k per year. But the job offers 50k (GBP) and it seems that offering shares greatly in excess of the salary is very disproportionate.
I feel like they got together and had a board meeting and asked themselves "How can we make this scam more obvious".
Do I simply not understand, or is this designed to trick people into committing, perhaps as a bait and switch?
That would likely be a startup.
So they need a developer who can ask for a good salary, but they don't have that much money. So instead they offer shares.
If the company is successful, due (in part) to the help of the developer, they make lots of money and the shares don't hurt much.
If the company fails and goes bankrupt, the shares are worthless and cost the company nothing.
So you see, from the company's point of view it's a good deal. From the employee's point of view, it's a gamble, not a scam. You may win, you may lose. If you are at a point in your life/career where you can live fine with £50k, you can go for it.
There may be a couple more restrictions in there, but having been in a couple of companies with a similar employee share scheme it often goes like this.
You become eligible for the shares after being an employee for two years, you can start selling up to your limit after another year. So that's 3 years in the company before you get any of the share money, it then takes you another two years to sell the rest of the shares.
They'll probably be employee only shares, you don't get to keep them if you leave the company and will have to sell them back at a token rate, probably pennies.
The benefit to you is an extra 90k in the long run, depending on company performance which you now have a vested interest in. The benefit to the company is that they've tied you in for 3-5 years before you can have any of that money and it fosters some loyalty in the staff.
This is quite what my emplyoer does. Stock compensation is very common among large (American) software companies. New hires usually get a large stock grant worth around $100k or even more. These stocks (called restricted stock units, RSUs) are meant to be vested, i.e. received by the employee, over a period of several years (usually around four). The base salary they offer varies on the location. In the US, base salaries even for new grads can be up to around $150k, while the same company would offer base salaries around $50k-$70k in Europe.
So not, that's not a scam. It's very common.
