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If you offered your friends an opportunity at your company, which based on your comment ostensibly would have paid them more and granted them equity, why did th
by LurkingPenguin 5y ago
If you offered your friends an opportunity at your company, which based on your comment ostensibly would have paid them more and granted them equity, why did they stay at Mailchimp?
- echelon 5y agoI don't think my friends thought my job was better, despite my regularly selling it. I failed to get them over for a happy hour or tech talk, which would have been a better sell than just talking about comp. Mailchimp was also super "artsy" (they hire artists to do murals), and my friends talked about how cool the founders were. This played the biggest role, I think. They had a mythos.
- LurkingPenguin 5y agoWell it sounds like comp wasn't as important to your friends at that time. If that's changed following Mailchimp's acquisition, that's on them, not Mailchimp.
- filoleg 5y agoAgreed. While the comp situation at MailChimp was subpar due to no-equity component, it isn’t fair to blame them for the outcome of this story here. There were no lies. The employees werent offered equity that ended up being worth nothing. They got job offers that stipulated X cash with no equity, and they willingly and knowingly accepted those offers, and they got compensated as promised. I fail to see how MailChimp is at fault here. The fact that there is Microsoft/Google/etc. and tons of other companies in the vicinity that pay way more, and grandparent poster’s friends still were staying there despite the poster’s urging and advertising, tells more about those friends than Mailchimp.
- esyir 5y agoI don't get it. One of the biggest memes around the startup scene is that equity is essentially a lottery ticket, and most lottery tickets don't win. Taking a known cash component with no equity, especially since this is already known and in the open is well established as the safe, "smart" move. Then you see this hullaballoo about not winning the lottery.
- mrgordon 5y agoWell you’re not distinguishing between two situations: 1. Someone chooses not to have equity because they want more cash now, don’t want to risk part of their compensation on equity, etc. 2. The company says their equity will never be liquid so you definitely don’t want it. You accept a cash offer with profit sharing instead. Then they sell the shares for $12 billion leaving you unknown job security and low expected future compensation while they profit off their lies
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago> despite my regularly selling it. This usually is a huge red flag. If one of my friends would try to regularly recruit me into their startup I would be very suspicious if the company was on solid ground or if my friend is just desperate and trying to get someone else into the bad deal they found themselves in so they don't have to deal with it alone.
- _0ffh 5y agoI regularly wonder what definition of "friend" some people operate with. If I found myself in a losing position, I'd do my best to keep my friends out of it, not to drag them in.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoYeah, I've been at a few companies in the last few years, and would never try to recruit anyone unless I was sure that they'd enjoy the new company.
- rocqua 5y agoThere are 'tiers' of people I would consider a 'friend', who'se pitches to me I would also be skeptical off, for suspicion they are self-interested. Now, this tier of friend is very close to 'acquaintance' but I think there are plenty of people for whom the boundary of 'being a friend' includes these kinds of acquaintance.