7 ms·

>"I was informed 28 hours before my 90 day window closed that the agreement I had thought I had didn’t exist; it was then that I realized I had 28 hours to eith

by xiaoma 11y ago

>"I was informed 28 hours before my 90 day window closed that the agreement I had thought I had didn’t exist; it was then that I realized I had 28 hours to either come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn’t have to save half of my stock, or I could sign the agreement as-is and avoid losing half of my already-diminished stake. I opted to sign." This egregiously unethical and it's saddening to hear Github's leadership keep sinking lower. What a way to treat literally the #1 contributor to github/github, who gave half a decade of his life to the company. Takeaway: don't join a startup as one of the first ten employees if you value your financial future. Zach is living proof that even if you're a top performer, you fully vest and the company becomes a unicorn, you still might be broke afterwards.

scalesolved 11y ago
Yup I was shocked by this, really disappointing behaviour from Github.
askyourmother 11y ago
I have learnt over the years from personal experience, and watching the outcomes of others, never, ever, accept a deal with an employer where they structure pay or rewards for future payout. Always, always get the payoff or bonus upfront. They may want to discuss potential claw back contractual clauses, but again, once you starting your own, they will back down. The biggest eye opener is that you never really "know" an employer till things go wrong and communication goes legal.
sheepmullet 11y ago
> Takeaway: don't join a startup as one of the first ten employees if you value your financial future. It is the dirty little startup secret. Top performers who care about the company/vision/product frequently get shafted. The problem is they typically have significant leadership roles and have a lot of emotional investment but they haven't negotiated leadership style exit packages or any official power. For example I was a top performer at company X ~10 years ago and I really cared about the product and our customers. So when new senior management started pushing a complete re-write of our systems into another language stack I pushed back. I argued it would cost $8-$10 million and give us minimal benefit. It wasn't helping our product or our customers. I argued we should upgrade one part of our system and measure the benefits etc. And then... I was let go for poor performance (way to really stick it to me!). They still haven't finished the rewrite but are still around and doing "ok" in the market. If I was a bit wiser and more mature I would have simply said "Great lets re-write it" and used it as an opportunity to learn the new language and ecosystem and then jump ship. Now this happens in large corporations as well as startups... But the really toxic part about startups is they go out of their way to hire and advertise to top performers who buy into the product vision etc and then they shaft them.
- lololomg 11y ago
  Great, let's rewrite it. We'll start with this piece here and get immediate benefit without having to complete the entire rewrite first, and then we'll decide which piece to do next!

by xiaoma 11y ago

scalesolved 11y ago

Yup I was shocked by this, really disappointing behaviour from Github.

askyourmother 11y ago

I have learnt over the years from personal experience, and watching the outcomes of others, never, ever, accept a deal with an employer where they structure pay or rewards for future payout. Always, always get the payoff or bonus upfront. They may want to discuss potential claw back contractual clauses, but again, once you starting your own, they will back down. The biggest eye opener is that you never really "know" an employer till things go wrong and communication goes legal.

sheepmullet 11y ago

> Takeaway: don't join a startup as one of the first ten employees if you value your financial future. It is the dirty little startup secret. Top performers who care about the company/vision/product frequently get shafted. The problem is they typically have significant leadership roles and have a lot of emotional investment but they haven't negotiated leadership style exit packages or any official power. For example I was a top performer at company X ~10 years ago and I really cared about the product and our customers. So when new senior management started pushing a complete re-write of our systems into another language stack I pushed back. I argued it would cost $8-$10 million and give us minimal benefit. It wasn't helping our product or our customers. I argued we should upgrade one part of our system and measure the benefits etc. And then... I was let go for poor performance (way to really stick it to me!). They still haven't finished the rewrite but are still around and doing "ok" in the market. If I was a bit wiser and more mature I would have simply said "Great lets re-write it" and used it as an opportunity to learn the new language and ecosystem and then jump ship. Now this happens in large corporations as well as startups... But the really toxic part about startups is they go out of their way to hire and advertise to top performers who buy into the product vision etc and then they shaft them.

lololomg 11y ago
Great, let's rewrite it. We'll start with this piece here and get immediate benefit without having to complete the entire rewrite first, and then we'll decide which piece to do next!