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I really think that's just darkly entertaining marketing. Silicon valley in reality is a ruthlessly corporate business world, where known to be worthless option
by neffy 7y ago
I really think that's just darkly entertaining marketing. Silicon valley in reality is a ruthlessly corporate business world, where known to be worthless options are traded for people's lives and labour. (Look up "founder's shares") Startups require cheap labour, if their investors are going to make out like bandits - that's what's really going on.
Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.
- jkaplowitz 7y agoThe equity grants awarded by publicly traded companies like Google/Alphabet are far from worthless, unlike for early stage startups where indeed most of those employee stock options end up as worthless as you say.
- panpanna 7y agoWeren't some early Facebook employee cheated out of their shares by some legal gymnastics?
- jkaplowitz 7y agoMy understanding is that did happen, but far before Facebook went public. I was discussing options awarded by companies that are already publicly traded at the time of grant.
- pjc50 7y agoIt wasn't always worthless, although I agree that options are a lottery ticket and you need to read all the small print. Back in the distant past of the early 2000s a Google chef made $26 million: https://searchengineland.com/google-employee-53-charlie-ayers-the-google-chef-profiled-on-msnbc-12505 https://searchengineland.com/google-employee-53-charlie-ayer... (of course they subsequently changed the rules to make that less likely for non-tech staff, part of the gradual move away from "Don't Be Evil")