As Silicon Valley's stock-driven wealth machine sputters in the recession, technology start-ups are exploring new ways for employees to tap their holdings.

Many of the moves have been triggered by Facebook Inc., which this week paid current and former employees who participated in a program that let them sell a portion of their shares in the privately held social-networking site. Current workers were allowed to sell up to $1 million worth of Facebook stock or 25% of their vested shares, whichever was greater, according to people familiar with the terms.

Demand for the program surpassed the $100 million that Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies had allocated to buying employee shares, these people said, resulting in Facebook scaling back how much former employees could sell.

Facebook, which is five years old and has more than 850 workers, adopted the program after some workers grew restless waiting for a public offering, said current and former employees. Now employees at other start-ups are getting antsy.

Facebook's program has set off "a snowball effect," said Hans Swildens, a principal at Industry Ventures in San Francisco, which buys employee shares in private companies in transactions ranging from $250,000 to $5 million. "Start-up employees are seeing the Facebook process unfold and are asking their management about when they're going to get the same thing," he said.

Many tech start-ups are struggling with how to give their private-company shares -- which have long been key to attracting and retaining employees -- some extra currency amid the largely dormant market for initial public offerings and acquisitions.

Industry Ventures and New York-based Millennium Technology Ventures said they are talking to start-ups about setting up programs where the two investment firms would directly buy shares from employees, similar to Facebook's deal with DST. They declined to identify the companies.

Meanwhile, 15 companies have signed up since April to an online exchange run by SecondMarket Inc. that helps employees and shareholders of private companies find buyers for their shares. SecondMarket, which takes a commission on transactions, said it has helped broker $50 million of such sales in the past year.

Some executives and venture capitalists said the new cash-out programs can boost worker morale and help with retention. The programs also give companies more control over employee transactions with third parties, which are largely unregulated and can cause swings in private-stock valuations.

The process of pricings by private investors is "an absolute black box," said David Kidder, CEO of Clickable Inc., a New York-based maker of online-ad management software that recently registered with SecondMarket as a "first step" toward possibly offering an employee program in the future. "It is absolute speculation."

Kevin Compton, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said he is encouraging some start-ups to explore giving employees a way to cash out because "when some employees have been there a long time and are fully vested" they may opt to leave if they can't sell part of their holdings.

But others bristle at the notion of cashing out early, saying it suggests insiders worry the value of the company is falling and could backfire if employees take their money and leave.

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