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As a former Plaid employee with options that vested after I was shitcanned last year, this is some pretty welcome news.
by xml4eva 7y ago
As a former Plaid employee with options that vested after I was shitcanned last year, this is some pretty welcome news.
- neonate 7y agoCongratulations. Can we have some inside stories please?
- sergiotapia 7y agoYou’re anon, and I was always curious in terms of $$$ how much did you end up with? At what stage did you join and how many options did you get? Very rare to find real data online about this
- jaggederest 7y agoI'm happy to post these things, without identifying companies. I'm sure you could find them on my resume or linkedin but there'll still be some ambiguity. Company A, 0.05% or 9000+ options vested, IPO, post-lockout sale at net ~$300k, was an early engineering employee Company B, <0.001% or 10000+ shares vested, very late engineering employee, not liquid yet, hypothetical value in low-mid 6 figures Make sure you do proper tax planning, taxes take an enormous bite, even with long term capital gains.
- theNJR 7y agoWhat tax-planning resources did you find useful?
- jaggederest 7y agoConsult an experienced tax attorney and CPA in your state. For a six figure sum the taxes make the cost of an attorney and CPA a rounding error.
- jsh123 7y agoWhat do you mean by tax planning? If your company IPOs they will withhold shares for you. Only thing to watch for is depending on your income they might underwithold. There isn’t much more to it than that.
- kelnos 7y agoIt depends on what form your equity is in. If you have options, you're responsible for taking care of your own taxes. (And the exercise+hold AMT mess is something to watch out for, though it's a little more difficult to fall into that trap now since the AMT exemption amount was raised.) Even if you have RSUs (where taxes are customarily withheld), the company will withhold at the minimum statutory rates, which may not match up with your personal tax bracket.
- jsh123 7y agoYes mentioned the company might underwithhold. I’m just suggesting it isn’t quite as complicated as it is being made out to be, from personal experience.
- heimidal 7y agoAnyone with a six-figure sale is nearly certain to end up owing more than they withhold (assuming you sell, which you probably should). If a company hasn't IPO'ed, an 83(b) election may also make sense.
- jsh123 7y agoThe IPO is a taxable event. You’re taxed at the IPO price, and your company should withhold shares based on that price. After whatever lockup you have some fraction of shares remaining. When you sell those and if the price is greater than the IPO price then you have capital gains on whatever shares you still hold. You still owe tax from the IPO. My point is the company will withhold shares from you, but you might need to pay more if they underwitheld for the IPO. This has nothing to do with your capital gains from selling your remaining shares.
- exclusiv 7y agoI'm recently found out that California treats capital gains as normal income. No fun.
- dmoy 7y agoThere are fewer than 10 states that don't tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income. Most states tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income. And then 10 states don't tax income at all.
- cookiecaper 7y agoSounds like a great reason to relocate to a state that is more reasonable about income taxes than CA.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dmoy 7y agoimo the cap gains treatment from CA is pretty normal compared to the majority of states. The part where CA chases your stock grants/options for years after you leave the state is a bit less reasonable to me. (But I'd guess some other states do the same)
- cookiecaper 7y agoRight, the taxation mechanism is typical, but it's the amount that's onerous. CA has the highest state income tax rate in the nation. If states are going to tax capital gains as income anyway, it's all the more reason to move to a state with low or non-existent state income tax.
- Vadoff 7y agoShort term capital gains, yes.
- 7y ago
- realbarack 7y agoCongratulations on your lucrative shitcanning!
- brianpgordon 7y agoI'm interviewing with them this week. Any advice/warnings I should know going in?
- xml4eva 7y agoBrush up on k-means clustering. Also be prepared to drink the kool aid.
- milofeynman 7y agoI heard a mobile engineer interviewed there and the question was go to wikipedia, implement ^ WITH tests in 1 hour. Lordy, they weren't bashing them because they didn't get an offer were they?
- jsh123 7y agodo you think it’s worth it? imo it’s hard to shake how awkward it is when everyone around you is rich and you’re being offered a regular salary that is now dictated by Visa HR
- Waterluvian 7y agoAlso isn't there a chance you'll just get canned soon? The interview pipeline has existed separate from the acquisition efforts. Visa will have opinions on where they want to go from here.
- kemitche 7y agoI don't have data, just an anecdote. I was hired by Sun. Just before my start date, Oracle announced they would be buying Sun. I was worried, but it turns out acquisitions are pretty slow processes. There was months of waiting for government approvals, then months more before the culture really started feeling like "Oracle" instead of "Sun." In short, there's a decent chance that anyone applying now could be on payroll for months or years before Visa actually meaningfully changes anything about Plaid's workflow.