3 ms·

You should include a Standard Offer Letter example showing employees what their stock/etc. will be worth under various exit assumptions. Showing/including the

by rdl 11y ago

You should include a Standard Offer Letter example showing employees what their stock/etc. will be worth under various exit assumptions. Showing/including the employee handbook at the same time is great, too. (I'd like to make this a standard thing; would be happy to help with this. Would need to find a lawyer willing to contribute time. I'd love a Standard Human Readable Offer Letter Builder.)

dmor 11y ago
Offer letter should be super standard. The offer letter generated by Zenefits is a single page...
- rdl 11y ago
  Which is insufficient to value the offer. I want there to be an offer letter plus other materials which explain it. It's meaningless to say something like "12000 shares of stock, vesting over 4 years." That may be the legally binding part, but there should be an appendix or model which shows what that actually means. The problem with making that a separate unsigned/etc. document is it isn't legally binding in the same way an offer letter is. There's additionally the insanity around "stock options must be approved by the board at the next meeting after you're hired", which could be a quarter. That seems stupid. There should be some cleaner way to handle that.
  - dmor 11y ago
    Oh yeah, usually i just send a spreadsheet. Even the stock options aren't legally binding usually... they still get approved by the board after the hire is made. It is not possible to pre-approve them, but you can do it but UWC (unanimous written consent) without holding a full board meeting. That's what we do.
spenczar5 11y ago
They can do better - they explicitly list in another part of the handbook what every employee receives (https://github.com/clef/handbook/blob/master/Employment%20Policies/Salary%20and%20Equity%20Compensation.md https://github.com/clef/handbook/blob/master/Employment%20Po...): > Every employee will be offered 41,963 Clef stock options (~.9% of outstanding shares, including the option pool these are drawn from). As mentioned above, they can also choose to reduce their salary by $5k/year in exchange for 4,663 more options (totalling ~1% of outstanding shares). This is a genuinely impressive commitment to transparency.

by rdl 11y ago

dmor 11y ago

Offer letter should be super standard. The offer letter generated by Zenefits is a single page...

rdl 11y ago
Which is insufficient to value the offer. I want there to be an offer letter plus other materials which explain it. It's meaningless to say something like "12000 shares of stock, vesting over 4 years." That may be the legally binding part, but there should be an appendix or model which shows what that actually means. The problem with making that a separate unsigned/etc. document is it isn't legally binding in the same way an offer letter is. There's additionally the insanity around "stock options must be approved by the board at the next meeting after you're hired", which could be a quarter. That seems stupid. There should be some cleaner way to handle that.
- dmor 11y ago
  Oh yeah, usually i just send a spreadsheet. Even the stock options aren't legally binding usually... they still get approved by the board after the hire is made. It is not possible to pre-approve them, but you can do it but UWC (unanimous written consent) without holding a full board meeting. That's what we do.

spenczar5 11y ago

They can do better - they explicitly list in another part of the handbook what every employee receives (https://github.com/clef/handbook/blob/master/Employment%20Policies/Salary%20and%20Equity%20Compensation.md https://github.com/clef/handbook/blob/master/Employment%20Po...): > Every employee will be offered 41,963 Clef stock options (~.9% of outstanding shares, including the option pool these are drawn from). As mentioned above, they can also choose to reduce their salary by $5k/year in exchange for 4,663 more options (totalling ~1% of outstanding shares). This is a genuinely impressive commitment to transparency.