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I don't mean to sound belligerent but you have the exact tone of a founder trying to swindle me into being the 15th employee for a paltry .5% in options with a

I don't mean to sound belligerent but you have the exact tone of a founder trying to swindle me into being the 15th employee for a paltry .5% in options with a 4 year vesting schedule.

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x0x0 11y ago
Yeah clearing 350k pretax, 40% tax, for four years is $52k/year. Is that what we're calling a "win" now? In the land of (no longer just million dollar homes but million dollar condos) that's a 20p down payment. It doesn't even get you into conforming loan territory. As (I think potatolicious) said on here the real scandal isn't the shit odds of a win, its how little many people come away from a win with. (Paraphrased)
- chubot 11y ago
  Yeah, you're guaranteed significantly more than $52k/year in stock working as an engineer at Google. When you adjust for risk, the $52k/year from a startup is probably more like $5k/year, or even less. I think people have said over and over again that you shouldn't work at a startup for the money. I hope all the 20-somethings moving to the Bay Area are listening. It's a pretty bad deal for the money, to the point that VCs are writing about it [1]. It's good to optimize for learning early in you career, to be exposed to different problems, etc. A sweet spot is to work at a bigger company with quality people (that part is very important), and to also make sure you are launching things, moving around, and learning things. [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity
- jheriko 11y ago
  better than nothing. also... nobody is entitled to anything, we should earn it. part of that includes paying attention to, and not signing contracts containing clauses that will obviously devalue your rewards.
  - sulam 11y ago
    No company will offer an employee a ratchet or any kind of anti-dilution protection in their stock package when they're hired. Fundamentally the issue here is that cash is still king. Cash I am able to give a company right now has much more value than 4 years of my life in many cases. If you don't have a lot of ready cash, you trade the thing you do have -- your productive years. Hey, you're going to work _somewhere_, right? You might as well get some equity, too. But it's very hard to pick a winner (if it was easy everyone would be a VC), and we only have 40-50 years of labor, so a limited number of trips to the card table. Hopefully you get dealt an ace, but even pocket rockets is not always going to take the pot, as people who started at Dropbox in the last year or so are learning. I would have told you three years ago that people working at Dropbox with vested equity essentially won the lottery. Now it's not so clear...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - x0x0 11y ago
    I never claimed anyone is entitled to anything. However, this was probably a 99.9% outcome -- early employee, unicorn, ipo, and given all that, this is a pretty dismal result. The more we talk about how little options actually are worth and how unlikely they are to change your life, the better it is for people trying to understand compensation packages in silly valley.
  - phamilton 11y ago
    The outrage here isn't "We demand to be paid more!" Rather, it's "Hey everybody! Stop taking below market pay!"

I don't mean to sound belligerent but you have the exact tone of a founder trying to swindle me into being the 15th employee for a paltry .5% in options with a 4 year vesting schedule.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

x0x0 11y ago

Yeah clearing 350k pretax, 40% tax, for four years is $52k/year. Is that what we're calling a "win" now? In the land of (no longer just million dollar homes but million dollar condos) that's a 20p down payment. It doesn't even get you into conforming loan territory. As (I think potatolicious) said on here the real scandal isn't the shit odds of a win, its how little many people come away from a win with. (Paraphrased)

chubot 11y ago
Yeah, you're guaranteed significantly more than $52k/year in stock working as an engineer at Google. When you adjust for risk, the $52k/year from a startup is probably more like $5k/year, or even less. I think people have said over and over again that you shouldn't work at a startup for the money. I hope all the 20-somethings moving to the Bay Area are listening. It's a pretty bad deal for the money, to the point that VCs are writing about it [1]. It's good to optimize for learning early in you career, to be exposed to different problems, etc. A sweet spot is to work at a bigger company with quality people (that part is very important), and to also make sure you are launching things, moving around, and learning things. [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity
jheriko 11y ago
better than nothing. also... nobody is entitled to anything, we should earn it. part of that includes paying attention to, and not signing contracts containing clauses that will obviously devalue your rewards.
- sulam 11y ago
  No company will offer an employee a ratchet or any kind of anti-dilution protection in their stock package when they're hired. Fundamentally the issue here is that cash is still king. Cash I am able to give a company right now has much more value than 4 years of my life in many cases. If you don't have a lot of ready cash, you trade the thing you do have -- your productive years. Hey, you're going to work _somewhere_, right? You might as well get some equity, too. But it's very hard to pick a winner (if it was easy everyone would be a VC), and we only have 40-50 years of labor, so a limited number of trips to the card table. Hopefully you get dealt an ace, but even pocket rockets is not always going to take the pot, as people who started at Dropbox in the last year or so are learning. I would have told you three years ago that people working at Dropbox with vested equity essentially won the lottery. Now it's not so clear...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- x0x0 11y ago
  I never claimed anyone is entitled to anything. However, this was probably a 99.9% outcome -- early employee, unicorn, ipo, and given all that, this is a pretty dismal result. The more we talk about how little options actually are worth and how unlikely they are to change your life, the better it is for people trying to understand compensation packages in silly valley.
- phamilton 11y ago
  The outrage here isn't "We demand to be paid more!" Rather, it's "Hey everybody! Stop taking below market pay!"