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"And now, in part because of your success, it’s too expensive to own what you had worked hard to vest? Ridiculous." I think people expect too much. Companies d

"And now, in part because of your success, it’s too expensive to own what you had worked hard to vest? Ridiculous." I think people expect too much. Companies don't owe their employees anything. They are businesses which aim to make money and/or to accomplish some goal, but that goal is almost always not "make your employees happy and wealthy". You may work your ass off, but if you do, do it because it is the right thing to do and you want to do it. If you do that, you'll never be disappointed unless you let yourself down. Don't do it because of options. If you do take options, because you have to or just want to, you are gambling. You might be able to keep the upper-hand if you know what you are doing, but even owners/partners get screwed sometimes (often).

ilyanep 11y ago
For how much companies are clamoring for more engineers and whining about how little talent they can get, the engineers themselves sure are told to sit down and shut up an awful lot in places like HN and these kinds of employee agreements.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  I'm an engineer. I'm not telling anyone to shut-up. I'm just making the point that before anyone takes stock options, they need to recognize what they are.
p4wnc6 11y ago
> You may work your ass off, but if you do, do it because it is the right thing to do and you want to do it. Lana Kane style noooope. Do it for a wage/equity/benefits/vacation package that is satisfactory in helping you achieve your goals. In fact, if you accept anything less than that, you're not just doing yourself a disservice, but also all of your peers because you're sending a market signal that you currently devalue your own labor. If you reached that decision through careful thought and really determined such lesser forms of compensation were OK for you, given other trade offs, then fine, so be it, that is your market price. But that's not usually what happens. Usually it's an inexperienced engineer who had no way to know any better because she/he had never been exposed to the important points of stock options, never knew what or how to ask, and followed some dopey advice like "just work hard because it's the right thing to do" because someone seemingly older/wiser/with more authority kept telling them to stop whining for more compensation and just do the work. It's precisely because a business doesn't have the explicit goal of making employees any wealthier than it has to that we have to be vigilant to demand our full market compensation, whether it means negotiating a better exercise window, or better accelerated vesting terms, or a real wage instead of a but-we're-a-startup wage, and so on.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  I thought this way for many years, but don't buy into it anymore. I still want to get paid as much as I can for the work I do, but I'm not any happier because of how much I make. Even today, I'm only happy when I've accomplished something I was trying to do. Sure, I want my family to be happy, but they would be happier if I were happier. Don't just do it for the money.
  - p4wnc6 11y ago
    But you surely can't suggest that this property of you should generalize to other people? Yes, there is a component of happiness related to feeling productive, but surely it's not 100%, and it varies from person to person. Your advice effectively says to ignore your non-work life goals that cost money because only your work-goals-productivity will make you happy. I doubt this very much, and certainly know that it's not true for anyone I've ever worked with.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    Dare I say there are non-monetary benefits to being paid at top of market. I've been near the top of band of my particular subfield for the last few years, after working for years at a bog-standard SDE comp package, and IMO there are some pretty compelling reasons to demand better compensation beyond, well, having the money. For one thing people stop fucking with you when you're getting top of market comp, for a lot of reasons - many of which are bullshit, but hey. The perceived quality of your work is higher because you're demanding (and getting) more for it - and people are more willing to treat your professional judgment seriously. In general companies and the people in them want very much to believe that they're getting what they paid for, so being known for being at the top of market (quite unjustifiably, of course) raises the default perception of your work. It also opens the window for alternative arrangements - work from home, more vacation, all that is considerably more on the table when you're perceived as a top-dollar high performer. Conversely, willingness to accept less than market seems to signal to management that you can be pushed around on other matters (true or not), and even if you're well capable of fending off this jerkish behavior, why not just avoid it and get paid more? I've personally seen founders' dispositions toward me improve, and just get more professional respect in general, by naming a high price and sticking with it. This isn't to say that one should take a horrible job because it pays top dollar, but in the current state of the industry you can have your cake and eat it too - you can work with good people on interesting stuff while staying within the top decile of your niche.
kylec 11y ago
This response puzzles me. Why can't employees work, in part, for options if they want to? Why can't employers offer vesting windows that allow the options the employee earned to act as a free lottery ticket, instead of a very costly one when the employee leaves? There's no guarantee that options will ever pay out, but why is extending the window in any way a bad thing for employees?
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  "There's no guarantee that options will ever pay out" ^^^ this*1000 You can work for options, but if you can't guarantee their value, won't that be a let down? Why not work to do something good, that you believe in, and/or to better yourself at least so that you may continue to do well?
mikeash 11y ago
People are made to expect too much. Options and other equity-related things are presented as golden tickets. They're magical carrots held out to employees to convince them to work harder for less pay. And then it turns out that their value is greatly overstated and people get upset. Yeah, people should know better. But it sure would help if companies would stop misleading people.

ilyanep 11y ago

For how much companies are clamoring for more engineers and whining about how little talent they can get, the engineers themselves sure are told to sit down and shut up an awful lot in places like HN and these kinds of employee agreements.

purpled_haze 11y ago
I'm an engineer. I'm not telling anyone to shut-up. I'm just making the point that before anyone takes stock options, they need to recognize what they are.

p4wnc6 11y ago

> You may work your ass off, but if you do, do it because it is the right thing to do and you want to do it. Lana Kane style noooope. Do it for a wage/equity/benefits/vacation package that is satisfactory in helping you achieve your goals. In fact, if you accept anything less than that, you're not just doing yourself a disservice, but also all of your peers because you're sending a market signal that you currently devalue your own labor. If you reached that decision through careful thought and really determined such lesser forms of compensation were OK for you, given other trade offs, then fine, so be it, that is your market price. But that's not usually what happens. Usually it's an inexperienced engineer who had no way to know any better because she/he had never been exposed to the important points of stock options, never knew what or how to ask, and followed some dopey advice like "just work hard because it's the right thing to do" because someone seemingly older/wiser/with more authority kept telling them to stop whining for more compensation and just do the work. It's precisely because a business doesn't have the explicit goal of making employees any wealthier than it has to that we have to be vigilant to demand our full market compensation, whether it means negotiating a better exercise window, or better accelerated vesting terms, or a real wage instead of a but-we're-a-startup wage, and so on.

purpled_haze 11y ago
I thought this way for many years, but don't buy into it anymore. I still want to get paid as much as I can for the work I do, but I'm not any happier because of how much I make. Even today, I'm only happy when I've accomplished something I was trying to do. Sure, I want my family to be happy, but they would be happier if I were happier. Don't just do it for the money.
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  But you surely can't suggest that this property of you should generalize to other people? Yes, there is a component of happiness related to feeling productive, but surely it's not 100%, and it varies from person to person. Your advice effectively says to ignore your non-work life goals that cost money because only your work-goals-productivity will make you happy. I doubt this very much, and certainly know that it's not true for anyone I've ever worked with.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  Dare I say there are non-monetary benefits to being paid at top of market. I've been near the top of band of my particular subfield for the last few years, after working for years at a bog-standard SDE comp package, and IMO there are some pretty compelling reasons to demand better compensation beyond, well, having the money. For one thing people stop fucking with you when you're getting top of market comp, for a lot of reasons - many of which are bullshit, but hey. The perceived quality of your work is higher because you're demanding (and getting) more for it - and people are more willing to treat your professional judgment seriously. In general companies and the people in them want very much to believe that they're getting what they paid for, so being known for being at the top of market (quite unjustifiably, of course) raises the default perception of your work. It also opens the window for alternative arrangements - work from home, more vacation, all that is considerably more on the table when you're perceived as a top-dollar high performer. Conversely, willingness to accept less than market seems to signal to management that you can be pushed around on other matters (true or not), and even if you're well capable of fending off this jerkish behavior, why not just avoid it and get paid more? I've personally seen founders' dispositions toward me improve, and just get more professional respect in general, by naming a high price and sticking with it. This isn't to say that one should take a horrible job because it pays top dollar, but in the current state of the industry you can have your cake and eat it too - you can work with good people on interesting stuff while staying within the top decile of your niche.

kylec 11y ago

This response puzzles me. Why can't employees work, in part, for options if they want to? Why can't employers offer vesting windows that allow the options the employee earned to act as a free lottery ticket, instead of a very costly one when the employee leaves? There's no guarantee that options will ever pay out, but why is extending the window in any way a bad thing for employees?

purpled_haze 11y ago
"There's no guarantee that options will ever pay out" ^^^ this*1000 You can work for options, but if you can't guarantee their value, won't that be a let down? Why not work to do something good, that you believe in, and/or to better yourself at least so that you may continue to do well?

mikeash 11y ago

People are made to expect too much. Options and other equity-related things are presented as golden tickets. They're magical carrots held out to employees to convince them to work harder for less pay. And then it turns out that their value is greatly overstated and people get upset. Yeah, people should know better. But it sure would help if companies would stop misleading people.