16 ms·

DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

• adoxyz 5y ago
  Good, pro-employee move. Next, I'd like to see pre-IPO startups offer longer periods to exercise shares when you leave. 90 days being standard is way too low.
  • tyingq 5y ago
    Seems like a pro employer move too. Less people hanging around that have already decided to leave...just waiting on a vesting cliff.
    • TechBro8615 5y ago
      Or you get a bunch of ex employees you fired after three months lingering around on the cap table (assuming you’re not a public company).
      • sk5t 5y ago
        Not if they haven't passed the cliff. Unvested options forfeit.
        • sk5t 5y ago
          This seems to be a very unpopular comment. But why--is the common case of losing (err, "returning to the employee option pool") unvested options at separation controversial, or have I done something offensive by pointing it out, or do y'all actually not agree with the accuracy of this?
          • TechBro8615 5y ago
            Probably because it was a non-sequitur to my comment. My point was that without a cliff, even employees who you terminated after three months will vest options that they can exercise for shares on your cap table. It’s irrelevant that they also have unvested options at that point. It’s the vested options that lead to the managerial overhead of a polluted cap table.
    • paulddraper 5y ago
      > people hanging around But it's only 1 year? * Bonuses are usually given annually * Signing bonuses and sabbaticals usually obligate one year employment A year seems like a very low bar.
  • hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    I totally agree with the above, and have commented on it many times before, but note the 90 day standard is because that is the maximum amount of time allowed for ISOs by the IRS. To allow for conversion after that time (e.g. 5-10 years seems to be what a lot of people are pushing for), the ISOs convert into non-qualified options. Still worth it in my opinion. Even better would be for the IRS to change the law (not sure if it's a law or a reg), because with companies staying private so much longer it's a different world.
    • borski 5y ago
      (Preface: IANAL) Only worth it if you aren’t early. ISOs provide preferential tax treatment, and early on are usually very very cheap, so many companies (mine included) also offer early exercise with ISOs, which is an unbeatable tax win (afaik). The issue occurs when options get expensive (aka the company is doing well) and then you have to do the math between ISOs or NSOs. The longer expiration may be better, but certainly not for every employee. That said, as companies get bigger they stop being able to offer as many ISOs (there is a max cap), so at that point they should extend the timeline for expiration. One thing companies do have to worry about though: a 10-year expiration means your cap table is in flux for 10 years, potentially, which makes calculations, acquisitions, etc, tougher.
      • fishtoaster 5y ago
        Wouldn't that only be an issue if a company offers NSOs instead of ISOs? What I've seen in the past is "here's some ISOs, they automatically convert to NSOs 90 days after you leave." That way you get all the benefits of an ISO (tax on sale) while you work there, then all the benefits of an NSO (doesn't disappear in a puff of smoke at day 90). Seems like strictly a win, regardless of company phase.
        • rileymat2 5y ago
          It not a win for a company that hires people who would not understand enough to value this rather obscure treatment. In the current system a lot of options get clawed back to the company's benefit from an inability or unwillingness to take the risk of exercising. It is no coincidence that this very simple modification is not too widespread.
  • echelon 5y ago
    > Next, I'd like to see pre-IPO startups offer longer periods to exercise shares when you leave. 90 days being standard is way too low. It should be at least 365 days so that you can split it between tax years. I've still got options of a public company I need to "dispose" of, and I don't want to do it all at once. Perhaps until the options expire (typically 10 years) would be too much to wish for, but that would be ideal.
  • jkaplowitz 5y ago
    My employer (not yet reflected in my profile and I'm not speaking for them here) made this change last year for every employee with at least 2 years tenure. For such employees, the post-termination exercise window equals the years of service up to a maximum of 4 years. I've heard similar things at a handful of other well-known tech startups.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • devoutsalsa 5y ago
    Is there any real incentive to offer more favorable terms to employees that plan to leave?
    • pm90 5y ago
      In this case they would be leaving with a smaller fraction of their stock grant and would allow the company to hire someone who would want the job sooner. Seems like a win-win.
    • woah 5y ago
      Offering more favorable terms means being able to hire better employees
  • alasdair_ 5y ago
    Niantic offers 10 years to exercise as an NSO and has done so for almost six years now.
  • mancerayder 5y ago
    Naive question here. Given that there's a long-term cap gains consideration, if the company has a strong likelihood (call it greater than 50% chance) of IPO isn't it better to exercise ASAP so the shares are kept more than 12 months in time for the IPO+lockup event? What's the real advantage of waiting to exercise, to make sure that the stock will be worth something versus wasting your call option costs? How high are these strike prices that people are holding out? Again, I've some, but limited (but very different) experience here with equity grants and options.
    • patothon 5y ago
      the question is often do you have the means to acquire that pre ipo stock. except if you join very early, it's too expensive to buy your stock with the level of risk associated. as an example, I joined an early stage startup as an exec (potential good deal!), but I would've had to shore 300k to exercise my stocks, pay taxes on it (minimal, that's the huge advantage here), and more than probably see it fail. now let's play the opposite scenario: you join as an engineer late stage, each ISO might be valued at 10 dollars each. how do you exercise. this game is skewed towards founders. in my example, I had to quit for personal reasons and the company was later acquired. however I wan't able to afford, so I got got of $100ks at the time of acquisition. removing these 90 days time would have let me gain what I was owed. no hard feelings, because I knew the game, but it was the moment I decided no more startups that have this 90 days BS.
    • avalys 5y ago
      Let's say you accept a lower salary from a startup, because they offer you 100,000 options with a standard 4-year vest/1-year cliff/90 days to exercise at a strike price (409a valuation) of $1 / share, and claim that an exit at $10 / share looks likely if growth stays on track. You stay for three years. The exit hasn't come yet because the VCs want to see a higher valuation, but the company has grown and the 409(a) valuation is now $5 / share. You've now vested 60,000 options that would cost you $60,000 to exercise, plus you will have an AMT adjustment of $240,000 because of the difference between the strike price and the current 409(a) valuation. So, exercising those options will cost you $120,000 (ballpark, IANA accountant) in exercise cost and taxes. Keep in mind you've accepted a lower salary for the past three years because of this stock, so you might not have that kind of cash lying around. And even if you do - are you willing to throw $120,000 into a bet that the company will one day have an exit? Keep in mind that the company may have debt, preferred stock, liquidation preferences, etc. and most companies won't share all their past financing terms with ordinary employees, so it may be hard to estimate what a realistic exit even looks like for your stock. And if you're leaving, maybe you're a little disillusioned with how things are going in the first place? You have 90 days to make this decision after leaving the company and then you lose the stock forever. For many people, the answer at this point is that they don't want to take the bet - and they get screwed out of a large part of what was supposed to be their compensation. It's a shitty and exploitative system. I worked at a startup where this exact thing happened to many people who contributed immense value to the company. We had a bumpy year, some management turmoil, etc. and many people left before the IPO and got nothing out of their years of hard work other than a shitty, uncompetitive salary. I will never work for another startup under these terms.
• londons_explore 5y ago
  The 1 year cliff never really made sense... It effectively gave the company a discount on employees who stayed only 364 days - or to look at it another way, a 'trial period' of 1 year where the pay was substantially less.
  • jdavis703 5y ago
    It helps keep the cap table small. After more than 2000 shareholders the company must register with and report information to the SEC. This is both a costly and time-consuming process.
  • RussianCow 5y ago
    Am I the only one that doesn't see that as unreasonable? It's not like you aren't accruing equity during that time; you still get the full year's worth of options at the 365 day mark. And the ramp-up time with new engineers can be so long that the first year isn't nearly as productive as consecutive ones. A buddy of mine who worked at a giant company (not strictly tech but you'd recognize it) said he heard from his boss that the company effectively considers the first year of a software engineer's employment a wash as far as cost/benefit. I can't imagine they're the only ones. In that case, why would you reward people who jump ship before your break-even point?
    • Beaver117 5y ago
      Reward? They only join in the first place because of the expected total compensation.
      • RussianCow 5y ago
        But it's not like the one year cliff is a hidden detail that you don't find out until you join; employees have all the information up front. If you choose to take the job anyway, you know that your compensation will be lower if you leave within the first 365 days, so if you still choose to leave, that's on you.
        • 5y ago
• carkmorwin 5y ago
  Does DoorDash also grant RSUs based on fixed bonus amount and not number of shares? It's hard to believe this would be pro-employee. https://www.teamblind.com/post/Lets-Boycott-Interviewing-at-Stripe-and-Instacart-after-their-New-RSU-Policy-fE5hpQPg https://www.teamblind.com/post/Lets-Boycott-Interviewing-at-...
  • r00fus 5y ago
    I think it's common in the industry to see RSU grants shown as say, "$50k" - but that's $50k in stock as of the grant time. Once the grant is finalized, the value of the RSU grant grows with the stock. ie, if the stock is $100, then it's the same as 500 share grant. This Blind post is saying that Instacart/Stripe says you only get $50k no matter the price of stock? How would you even structure that kind of grant? Why not just make it a bonus?
    • dabfiend19 5y ago
      all of my friends at google say the grant is in dollars and stays in dollars at google. at the end of the quarter you get a variable number of shares based on current stock price. While this reduces upside, it also reduces downside.
      • z0r 5y ago
        you have misunderstood your friends, or your friends have misunderstood their grants
      • potatolicious 5y ago
        I've been at Google fairly recently, that's not how it works. Your offer states that you will get $X of shares, vesting over 4 years. The $X is converted to a number of shares shortly after joining, based on market price, and is locked in from that point forward. Your friends are mistaken.
        • QuercusMax 5y ago
          This is correct. I believe the share-price they pick is something like the average daily share price for the next full month after you join. So if you join Jan 28, the $$ value of your stock grant will be evaluated around March 1 to determine your grant-price, and then you'll get your first vested shares monthly (around the 25th, I think?). I believe they used to due quarterly vesting for folks who didn't get much equity, but now that you can have vesting of fractional shares, ~everybody should be on a monthly vesting schedule.
• almost_usual 5y ago
  I was expecting a catch with the equity grant period shortening but it seems it’s still four years? If so this is great for employees.
  • xyzelement 5y ago
    Wouldn't grant period shortening be even better for employees? (ie, not a catch) ... Did you mean lengthening?
    • almost_usual 5y ago
      No, a longer grant period means you benefit more from stock appreciation. If you get a 4 year grant and the stock goes up 5x in a year you get that for four years. If you’re on an annual grant I really doubt your employer will keep paying 5x your starting comp after a year.
      • xyzelement 5y ago
        I am late to the response here but one of us is wrong about how grants work, and I think it might be you :) An equity grant is an allocation of shares/options offered to you when you start. eg: join our company and get 40K shares. Vesting just controls how long it takes you to get those shares. In a 4 year vesting you get 10K each year. In a 1-year you'd get them all at once in 12 months. This is independent of the share price, it's your equity that's the whole point. So in no universe is it better to get 40K after 4 years than it is to get 40k in one year.
• shaohua 5y ago
  awesome
• ram_rar 5y ago
  Depending on how you look at it. This is good for employees who dont have to wait till the cliff. But on the other hand, if your RSUs are based on a fixed amount (which I believe is the case for all the new hires in DD) and not no of units, then you're missing out on stock growth. Since the compensation is capping the upside of stock. Overall, this is not bad for a company that has already IPOed. I hope the startups that are on the verge of the IPO dont use this as a way to cap out giving RSUs to employees.
  • potatolicious 5y ago
    > if your RSUs are based on a fixed amount (which I believe is the case for all the new hires in DD) and not no of units That's quite surprising. Generally RSU comp is based on a particular monetary amount, but converted to no. of units upon issuance based on market prices (usually at/close to start date). Is this not the case with DoorDash? If that's the case that seems... awful? That's a cash bonus with a downside.
    • jypepin 5y ago
      What I've seen is generally the conversion happens once for the whole package, when you sign. So if the stock grows during your vesting period, the value increases (goes both way obviously). I think here they are mentioning value based, which means that instead of being given X amount of shares/rsu over 4 years, you're given "the equivalent of $X" at the begining of each years. So after 1 year, of the stock doubled in price, you will effectively receive half the amount of stocks (still the same $ value tho).
      • potatolicious 5y ago
        Boy if that's true that's a real bummer. That's not very different than just getting a cash bonus. The entire point is to encourage people to stay by letting their wealth grow with the company? A scheme like that seems wildly counterproductive.
      • nostrademons 5y ago
        That's typical, but I've heard of a move away from it, to a plan where you get a set dollar amount every month(?) and it's converted to employee shares at the market rate then. Sounds like DoorDash just moved to it, and someone has linked a Blind thread where apparently Stripe/Instacart have, and I heard from a friend that Lyft just moved to that as well. I can see the importance of this from the company end - with tech company shares skyrocketing, a fixed share amount gives them potentially unlimited stock compensation liabilities which could drag on earnings. But from an employee perspective, it sucks. You get none of the upside of company stock appreciation but all of the downside of being forced to purchase company stock with a portion of your compensation. You're much better off taking higher cash compensation and using that to purchase the stock of hot tech companies on the open market.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• darthvader101 5y ago
  hope more companies adopt this practice
• DebtDeflation 5y ago
  Not surprised. I'm probably a fair bit older than the average HN reader (finished undergrad in 1995). This is the hottest job market I've seen since the height of the dotcom bubble (mid 1999 to early 2000), and if it continues along it's current trajectory it will pass that by year end.
  • digianarchist 5y ago
    Browsing /r/cscareerquestions it looks like entry level folks are having a hard time breaking into the industry. Employers are mostly recruiting senior levels it seems.
    • dahfizz 5y ago
      I think there is a bit of a selection bias going on in that subreddit. I finished undergrad last May and had multiple offers to choose from well before I even graduated. Maybe covid has slowed hiring since, though.
      • whimsicalism 5y ago
        Eh, I talk to a fair number of undergrads and I think it has been tough this past year.
        • jshen 5y ago
          Something is off then. Are they in big cities? Do they not know where/how to apply? We’ve had a hard time hiring anyone, including entry level.
          • whimsicalism 5y ago
            I mean, what sort of compensation are you offering? Also - I'm talking about last year, not now. But I am recently out of college and have not even passed resume screen by a few companies despite referral, credentials, etc.
• fallmonkey 5y ago
  With Google doing front loading(33/33/22/11) and other companies also shifting away from conventional 25% per year vesting to make first few years more attractive, they gotta catch up to stay competitive. Uber recently did the same of removing cliff.
  • breck 5y ago
    Do you have a link for Uber dropping the cliff? I didn't know they did that.
  • B-Con 5y ago
    Source on Google doing front loading?
    • thebean11 5y ago
      I don't have a link, but seen this on Blind quite a bit
    • etxm 5y ago
      I had an offer in December that was 33/33/22/11
    • Cyph0n 5y ago
      I joined last month and can confirm this.
  • thebean11 5y ago
    Ehh, aren't the front loaded grants smaller in total? I don't see front loading as a good thing necessarily.
  • readams 5y ago
    The Google front loading is because you'll get annual refresher grants after the first year (and no "big refresh" after four years), and it makes the total comp more even overall as a result.
    • 5y ago
• bentlegen 5y ago
  The article seems to intentionally obscure whether the previous vesting period was quarterly or not. My cynical read of this is that they are changing the vesting schedule to quarterly (instead of monthly, which is more typical), and burying the lede on that by painting this as a benefit to employees (when it really only impacts new employees). Does anyone know if this is true or not?
  • piercebot 5y ago
    Typically, there's a "cliff" after the first year, at which point it switches to quarterly. So you get nothing the first three quarters, but after quarter 4 (your first year at the company), 25% of your 4-year grant is immediately vested. Every quarter after that is another 6.25% of your initial grant. I believe the point they were trying to make in the article is that, instead of quarterly grants following the pattern of: [0%, 0%, 0%, 25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, ...] It would instead follow the pattern: [6.25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, ...] ```
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
    I’ve seen quarterly vesting much more often than monthly in offers from several different companies over the years.
  • mynameisvlad 5y ago
    > instead of monthly, which is more typical Is it? Almost all my and my friends' RSUs have been quarterly, with a typically 1 year cliff as described in the article.
    • bentlegen 5y ago
      Maybe this is new, but in my 15 year career working for startups, I've only ever had monthly vesting.
• soheil 5y ago
  It looks like DoorDash just put up a big banner at their front door saying if you want to stay less than a year and still get paid highly apply here. Wouldn't this move incentivize employees seeking short term employment thus diluting stocks given out to existing long term employees?
  • ralph84 5y ago
    People who are only staying because of vesting tend not to be the most productive. Better for everyone to have someone who's not working out or doesn't want to be there leave after a quarter instead of dragging it out for a year.
  • nostrademons 5y ago
    I think they do this to keep bad hires from sticking around until the cliff. It takes a lot to fire someone legally - oftentimes you have to document ~6 months of poor performance, put them on a PIP, give them a chance to remediate, etc. Combine that with normal long ramp-up times in a tech company, and by the time you know it's not working out and can fire them, they're pretty close or past the 1 year vesting point anyway. It's much more efficient if the employee decides to leave on the their own, if they know it's a mutual bad fit. This removes the incentive to stick around for the windfall - if you're not enjoying your workplace, go leave and find a better one, and you get paid fully for time served. It's a lot like the buyout offers at places like Zappos or Coinbase, designed to make sure that everyone is on-board with the existing company culture.
    • soheil 5y ago
      I get the point about unhappy employees sticking around just for their cliff to vest, but what about attracting a new breed of employees looking for short term employment?
      • nostrademons 5y ago
        That's already a risk in tech, because wages are so high but ramp-up times are pretty long. They get weeded out relatively quickly and usually run out of desirable employers, though. That's why employers are skeptical of employees with multiple short-duration stints or gaps on their resume.
• Animats 5y ago
  This does not, of course, include the people who actually do the deliveries.
  • sergiotapia 5y ago
    of course, they are not employees
    • floodyberry- 5y ago
      I believe you meant to say "of course, they are not extremely smart at computers like me, so they do not deserve to live". Don't worry, everyone posting here agrees with you!
    • elil17 5y ago
      Only due to a legal loophole DoorDash is exploiting in order to skirt labor laws
      • sergiotapia 5y ago
        Aren't doordash workers 1099 and can take jobs as they see fit? I thought that was their model. Are you implying doordash delivery guys actually work 39 hours/week to skirt full-time employment? (that would be fucked up I agree)
        • elil17 5y ago
          Hiring thousands of individual workers to all do the same thing is not what 1099s are for.
• khazhoux 5y ago
  LOL contrast this with Uber's offers in 2016: Standard vesting schedule with 1-year cliff... but you would be prevented from selling any stock grant for the first year after it vests. Love it, thank you but no!
• bww 5y ago
  > Because we see equity as part of total compensation, we believe employees should receive equity as it’s earned — every quarter. This reads to me like someone looked at the data and discovered that almost everybody who stays employed for a quarter goes on to stay for a year. So they decided to try to juice some marketing value out of a policy change that makes no functional difference to anyone. Why else would they choose to have equity vest quarterly instead of with each pay period? Or monthly, which is already typical after the cliff? If you believe equity is part of total compensation why does it need a different schedule at all?
  • gopalv 5y ago
    > Why else would they choose to have equity vest quarterly instead of with each pay period? This makes sense for reduced paperwork if the company is buying back 28% of the shares to pay taxes instead of selling it to the market to pay the taxes - the company can reduce the open market sale on vesting days, but keep it as a single event within the quarter (advance tax payment per quarter).
    • davidlee1435 5y ago
      Is this the only reason why we can’t have biweekly vests? This sounds like something solvable with technology, no?
• mupuff1234 5y ago
  Have any of these food delivery companies actually reached profitablity? What's the endgame?
• justaguy88 5y ago
  This is great! Allows bad-fits to leave asap rather than hanging around till 366 days
• bogomipz 5y ago
  I have a tangential question. What is most people's experience with additional options being awarded to employees beyond the initial grant? Is there generally also a separate cliff for those additional option grants? I ask because I interviewed with a startup recently and the recruiter told me that the company had just awarded everyone in the company additional options. I asked them if there was a cliff attached to those but they couldn't answer that.
• bern4444 5y ago
  My company also does not have a 1 year cliff and it's wonderful. I switched a few months ago from a company that did. It was a farce how my old company, at the end of the year, would say your compensation for next year is $X but part of X was paid out over the next 4 years with a 1 year cliff each year. Just one of many reasons why I left. My current company pays out equity every 3 months and it's incredible. The only good thing my old company did was pay every week instead of every 2 weeks. I know most companies do every 2 weeks; I was surprised at how large a difference getting paid every week vs every 2 weeks makes. Not sure why the extra week between is so impactful but it really is.
  • scribu 5y ago
    > I was surprised at how large a difference getting paid every week vs every 2 weeks makes. In what way?
    • briefcomment 5y ago
      I would think, psychologically, it feels more of a two way relationship, rather than one way (i.e. you working constantly for the company with them only occasionally reciprocating)
    • crooked-v 5y ago
      While this isn't much of a company relationship thing: If you're getting paid every 2 weeks, sometimes you'll get paid the first/third week of the month and sometimes the second/fourth, which can be a pain if you're trying to keep a consistent amount in a checking account while also having bill pay and auto-transfers to savings/investment accounts. Or, tl;dr, it makes it easier to automate money without leaving a large buffer of cash in a checking account.
      • davidgay 5y ago
        And in other parts of the world, they just pay monthly. Avoids that problem...
• novok 5y ago
  TBH I'd feel jittery working at door dash. COVID is going to end completely soon and the boom in deliveries is going to drop with it, probably along with their stock price. If was to go work there, I could start selling every month. But they also don't give you units of RSUs as stock comp, just cash equivalents, so that is another major downside working there.
  • ekzy 5y ago
    Covid might have created some habits in people, not sure the deliveries are gonna drop that much
  • snotrockets 5y ago
    You should sell every month regardless. You already invested in your employer by betting your future on them. Diverse the rest.
    • TheGigaChad 5y ago
      Idiotic advice, if you see that the company is going well - hold. Of course the subhuman idiots in hackernews will like your comment and you will get upvoted.
• kjgkjhfkjf 5y ago
  Great move. Joining a new company always involves a leap of faith, and this reduces the risk somewhat of the fit not being satisfactory. I hope that all companies that offer equity will do the same as DoorDash.
• kerng 5y ago
  This is good progress. Just two months ago I declined an offer from a known and well funded startup because of a one year cliff on equity. The recruiter didn't seem to be able to discuss this matter and I asked them to make sure to bubble this sort of thing up their food chain. I never heard back afterwards. As an "old timer" in the industry a one year cliff makes absolutely no sense to me. Its like working for credit, which seems very backwards.
  • draw_down 5y ago
    I suppose in principle, but in practice I want to be around longer than a year anyway. After a year it’s a wash.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    I am so fascinated at how my grandfather would spend decades at a company, my Dad would spend a decade, and now people decline jobs over the expectation that they stay 1 year. And I was in my first job 51 weeks. I don't think you are wrong in doing so as the market in tech moves fast while employers move like slugs, it is just such a shift from what I grew up to expect.
    • endtime 5y ago
      The problem isn't necessarily that the employee expects to want to leave in under a year, so much as they don't want the company to have an incentive to let them go in under a year.
      • quelltext 5y ago
        Now they'd have an incentive to let them go in under a quarter, by that logic. Not sure if that's really their concern here. Companies don't just ditch reasonably well performing employees because they want to avoid compensating them. That would already mean that each time RSUs vest the company would have an incentive to fire.
        • dodobirdlord 5y ago
• __te__ 5y ago
  Note: DoorDash employs the labor of approximately 104,000 people. Of those, about 4,000 are classified as employees. Of those, only a portion (of unknown size) are "equity-eligible." Only equity-eligible roles classified as employees get equity. For everyone else employed by DoorDash, and on whose backs DoorDash is built, let them eat cake.
  • b9a2cab5 5y ago
    That is ultimately the result of minimum wage. Because minimum wage is above the market equilibrium (since these jobs are unskilled and there is a surplus of unskilled labor in the U.S. due to illegal immigration and deindustrialization) and the market moves faster than legislation, there will always be loopholes through which the standard of pay (or associated benefits) is lowered below what nominally would be minimum wage. If you ban DoorDash someone else will pop up to exploit the system. Or someone like Kiwibot or Serve Robotics will come along and automate the whole thing and remove the jobs from the market entirely. Legislators should stop fixating on minimum wage and fix the root causes behind low pay rather than trying to legislate band aids.
    • hyperhopper 5y ago
      I haven't heard this rationale before. What do you think the root causes, and their fixes are?
• mancerayder 5y ago
  In NYC my experience is that the equity vests in four years, with one year "cliffs" for four years. The three-year, the "monthly", the other stuff I hear about is fantastical to me. And the equity isn't ever really life-altering. Maybe I'm on the wrong coast?
• beervirus 5y ago
  > Furthermore, we want the reward to reflect the work that our team does to realize DoorDash’s mission and empower the communities we serve. What is the mission here? Is Doordash at all sustainable without continually funneling VC money into subsidizing services that no one would pay for at their breakeven cost?
• bkjelden 5y ago
  If it's clear to both parties a new hire isn't going to work out, it's in the company's best interest (as well as the employee's) for the employee to move on ASAP rather than sticking around for a one year cliff.
• vmception 5y ago
  Delaware should regulate this at the state level and if you don't like the statutory result, you can incorporate in at least one of 55+ other sovereign jurisdictions within the United States People that really think they need a state-level business court system for their multinational unicorn, in a place they never physically will be, can just keep using Delaware for no reason, and their employees will subsequently have better earned securities laws.
• ronhav3 5y ago
  How is it that companies that don't offer any equity can still compete in this market ? Who joins Oracle/IBM...etc' these days ?
  • draw_down 5y ago
    Probably the people who don’t fit the demographics for companies like Door Dash. Oh excuse me, my mistake, we call that “team fit”