I wonder if you worked for a certain california-named company based in another california city... Your experience sounds a lot like mine.
They sell-to-cover when my stocks vest quarterly, which pisses me off because the stock constantly goes up and I wish I could keep them until the time my tax bill is due.
And, I have to manually report to the taxman all the money paid via those sell-to-covers, because even though eTrade sends me the transaction details each year, and they clearly tell the IRS how many stocks I got, they don't tell the IRS how much tax I already paid on it.
When I worked for the company named after a rain forest, we had the choice of sell to cover, sell all or pay taxes without selling shares. I always chose to sell all. I would never have taken 25%-30% of my hypothetical cash compensation and bought one stock. Why would I keep my RSUs?
Now I work at a smaller company doing the same thing (cloud consulting) making the same amount all cash. I much prefer that over cash + RSUs.