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We're excited to make 10 years the new standard option exercise window for startup employees. Each of us have personally experienced someone close to us dealin
by Harj 11y ago
We're excited to make 10 years the new standard option exercise window for startup employees. Each of us have personally experienced someone close to us dealing with the stress of trying to exercise their options within 90 days and it sucks.
We'd like to see more companies making this change, we'll be keeping the public list of YC companies who have either implemented or pledged to implement an extended window, updated here: https://triplebyte.com/ycombinator-startups/extended-options https://triplebyte.com/ycombinator-startups/extended-options
- ekosz 11y agoHey harj! The article and plan is really interesting. I wanted to read more of the details and comparisons, but it seems the link from the sentence "We’ve created a summary of the gory details on both the business and legal aspects here" just brings you to the triplebyte homepage. Do you happen to have a direct link to that page?
- Harj 11y agoSorry about that, fixed. Here's the link: https://data.triplebyte.com/extending-stock-option-exercise-window-guide-43821b47cbbd https://data.triplebyte.com/extending-stock-option-exercise-...
- jsprogrammer 11y agoHow was the time period of 10 years picked? It seems rather arbitrary? As an employee, why would I want a dangling guillotine over my options/compensation?
- hkmurakami 11y agoiirc 10 years is the legal limit.
- Harj 11y agoIt's ten years from the date the options are granted, which is how long the options themselves last for.
- seeing 11y agoWhy 10 years and not 100 or 1000? If this is a legal limit, can anyone explain the rationale behind the limit?
- lucisferre 11y agoI'm just reading the docs now and I am probably not understanding how they work, but it seems to say that employees have 3 years from the termination date, not 10 years as you mention. I'm assuming I'm misunderstanding how this works.
- tn13 11y agoI dont understand these things much but I think encouraging employees to exercise their options as early as possible is better thing to do when the value of those stocks is dirt cheap.
- tedmiston 11y ago> We’re advising Triplebyte candidates to favor companies making this change, and we’ve already convinced 12 companies to pledge to do this. This is incredible. You might be the first recruiting startup to really advocate for the engineer.
- mbesto 11y agoAm I correct in reading the blog post that there are no downsides to having 10-year options? > As Sam Altman wrote, this is an unfair situation and needs to be fixed. And Ben Horowitz criticized his stance and Sam said he would be rethinking the way he communicated his position. Was that ever taken into consideration?