I don't think you read very carefully. As the author is careful to note, a share buyback is only a way to return money to shareholders a la dividends iff the shares are retired. But as the author points out, often the shares are not in fact retired, but used in other ways (for employee compensation, acquihires or acquisitions). It's not a "bad thing", and I don't think the author is arguing that it is, it's simply that the total value of a buyback can't be equated to a dividend unless you're looking at shares truly retired.
> But as the author points out, often the shares are not in fact retired, but used in other ways (for employee compensation, acquihires or acquisitions).
Those two things are not connected in any way. Say you do a share buyback of 100 shares and give out 50 shares in compensation to employees. What you've done is given 100Xshare_price to your shareholders (you've gone out on the market and bought those shares from them) and 50Xshare_price to your employees (by issuing the new shares and thus diluting your shareholders). That second decision is independent from the first.
