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I completely agree. I think the following quote really captures the argument of the article: "There is a more fundamental issue at the heart of this seemingly

by arciini 10y ago

I completely agree. I think the following quote really captures the argument of the article: "There is a more fundamental issue at the heart of this seemingly good solution: A 10-year exercise window is really a direct wealth transfer from the employees who choose to remain at the company and build future shareholder value, to former employees who are no longer contributing to building the business/ its ultimate value." In short, Kupor believes that even if you chose a lower-salary, higher-options/equity package, you should be stripped of your options if you leave. To him, it's only fair if only investors and employees who remain get to keep equity. Instead, you, who have been directly responsible for making the stock price rise so much that your options are costly to exercise, deserve nothing.

bravo22 10y ago
I found that to be a bad argument as well. The author is conveniently ignoring the fact that those options vested in the first place. By that logic, why should investors get a lot of the windfall when they didn't "work hard" for the life of the company? Basically it is a disguised argument against shareholders who are not already wealthy. "Here have these shares of the company. Oh, but you don't really deserve them because you didn't buy it with cash like we did, you earned it through sweat. Your labor is worth less than our capital".
chimeracoder 10y ago
> Instead, you, who have been directly responsible for making the stock price rise so much that your options are costly to exercise I agree with what you're saying, but to clarify, it'd be the taxes which are prohibitively costly, not the act of exercising the options themselves (your hard work doesn't change the price at which you exercise; it just changes the amount that is taxable). You may still be unable to afford the money it'd cost to exercise your full grant, but that figure was determined before you started working at the company, based on the size of your grant and the price at that time. (IANAL)
angersock 10y ago
Good summary. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anybody these days that actually is deliberately treating early employees well in this regard. On the one hand, there's the wink-and-nudge that joining early will make you a millionaire--but then you've got folks like this who are undermining the entire mythos. I think we are all interested in how this will play out.
hkmurakami 10y ago
That quote is almost verbatim what Ben Horowitz said in his "one management principle" Stanford lecture. A16Z is fully onboard with Scott Kupor writing this piece.

by arciini 10y ago

bravo22 10y ago

I found that to be a bad argument as well. The author is conveniently ignoring the fact that those options vested in the first place. By that logic, why should investors get a lot of the windfall when they didn't "work hard" for the life of the company? Basically it is a disguised argument against shareholders who are not already wealthy. "Here have these shares of the company. Oh, but you don't really deserve them because you didn't buy it with cash like we did, you earned it through sweat. Your labor is worth less than our capital".

chimeracoder 10y ago

> Instead, you, who have been directly responsible for making the stock price rise so much that your options are costly to exercise I agree with what you're saying, but to clarify, it'd be the taxes which are prohibitively costly, not the act of exercising the options themselves (your hard work doesn't change the price at which you exercise; it just changes the amount that is taxable). You may still be unable to afford the money it'd cost to exercise your full grant, but that figure was determined before you started working at the company, based on the size of your grant and the price at that time. (IANAL)

angersock 10y ago

Good summary. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anybody these days that actually is deliberately treating early employees well in this regard. On the one hand, there's the wink-and-nudge that joining early will make you a millionaire--but then you've got folks like this who are undermining the entire mythos. I think we are all interested in how this will play out.

hkmurakami 10y ago

That quote is almost verbatim what Ben Horowitz said in his "one management principle" Stanford lecture. A16Z is fully onboard with Scott Kupor writing this piece.