Amazon has 1.5 million employees. Say that it's a completely fair co-op and I have a 1-in-1.5-millionth share of the whole company. Their market cap is about 2.5T, so this is about 1.6 million USD in stock that I own. (By amazing coincidence, their market cap in USD is about the square of the employee headcount)
But if I'm a rank-and-file employee with nobody under me, then doubling my production could only be equivalent to adding one more 1-in-1.5-millionth to the company's value, right? Equivalent to hiring one more employee at my level.
For that impossible extraordinary 80-hours-per-week double effort, my stock would go up... a dollar, right? Roughly 1-in-1.5-millionth of my 1.6 million dollars of stock.
I think it's a joke. I think "stock incentivizes people to work harder" is a little joke that people tell each other so that labor will be pacified with company stock and leftists will bicker about co-ops instead of saying the quiet part which is that people just want more money
I just don't see any math in which stock isn't basically a tragedy of the commons for boots-on-the-ground workers. If I was paid for exactly the labor I do, doubling my effort doubles my paycheck. If I have stock, some of that revenue is spread to everyone else who has stock. Giving everyone stock doesn't incentivize anyone any more, right? What am I overlooking?
That might be the case if workers were bricklayers and output was measured in walls. But supposedly this incentive might cause you to have a brilliant idea that makes billions for the company, and then you're gaining more than a few bucks.