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But that's not what happened here. It's not that they were told one thing but should have known to expect another. They were told one thing, and that one thing
by staticautomatic 7y ago
But that's not what happened here. It's not that they were told one thing but should have known to expect another. They were told one thing, and that one thing happened/didn't happen. It's totally cut and dried.
- scarmig 7y agoEmployees aren't sophisticated investors, particularly new grads entering the workforce. If it was clearly monopoly money that was never going to be going into their pockets, why did the CEO bother to offer it to them? The obvious and accurate answer is he knew they would value it at sticker price (or, at least sticker price discounted by the usual startup lottery shenanigans) while it would never cost his company a cent. The fact that he managed to con a bunch of people using what amounted to insider knowledge is likely legal, but we still call a legal con a con.
- staticautomatic 7y agoThe fact that it might never happen doesn't make it monopoly money. I once had a company that issued a convertible note which basically said, "If we raise x amount of money then it triggers a conversion to preferred." We didn't raise x amount of money, so it didn't convert to preferred. Pretty simple stuff.
- JamesBarney 7y agoI think most of the employees were under the impression that if the company did as well as it did they would make a significant amount of money. The CEO tried to encourage this view and did nothing to discourage it.