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> It's been almost exactly 4 years Funny how often you read that in resignation posts. Four years is typically when one's shares become fully vested. At this p

by staunch 15y ago

> It's been almost exactly 4 years Funny how often you read that in resignation posts. Four years is typically when one's shares become fully vested. At this point there's no way for him to make significantly more money from working at Stack Exchange. It's perfectly logical to quit now, to either 1. Relax (maximizing family happiness) or 2. Start a new company (maximizing economic opportunity). Considering how recently they pivoted into a VC-backed company it seems rather too soon for a co-founder to be jetting though. Wonder if Spolsky regrets backdating their vesting schedule (if that's what they did). Might be a bit of a cautionary tale for founders.

jfarmer 15y ago
It's common to re-up soon-to-vest employees with additional options, especially founders.
yarone 15y ago
From my personal experience, it's not just about vesting. It's about energy. For many folks, after 3-4 years, things just aren't the same. Jeff's baby is all grown up. He's poured his heart and soul into this thing. Time to catch his breath, refocus priorities, and move on to something new.
- raganwald 15y ago
  Perhaps (I am speculating, not dictating) this is exactly why four-year vesting periods work. If a large chunk of people burn out or get bored after four years, a five year vesting period would create sullen, unproductive boat anchors. A three year period would have people jumping ship to found something new while they are still able to bring their prowess to bear growing the company. But after four years, both parties have maximized their gain from each other.
finnw 15y ago
I've always been slightly surprised that founders accept vesting at all. What is to stop the VC from firing you the day before your options mature? Then you would effectively have worked for them for free for 2 years, and for a low salary for a year and 51 weeks after that, all at 70 hours a week. I would never give anyone the opportunity to do that to me.
- rgrieselhuber 15y ago
  Because your shares vest gradually over time, so that by the time you get to year 4, you're well over 75% of the way there.
- mhartl 15y ago
  The stock vests over time. Four years isn't the typical time for stock to vest; it's the typical time to be fully vested. Usually it's 1/4 per year for 4 years. Vesting doesn't just protect investors. It also protects cofounders. Suppose you start a venture 50/50 with a buddy. After a year, he leaves, and three years later you've bootstrapped the company into a $100m business. Without vesting, your cofounder would still be entitled to 50%. With vesting, he would get 25% of 50%, or only 12.5%.
  - pmjordan 15y ago
    Sorry to be nit-picking, but the percentage of shares issued that the departed cofounder holds after 4 years would be 20%. It's not helpful to look at percentages during the calculation: look at absolute number of shares. If 1 share vests each month, the remaining founder has 48 after 4 years, the departed one retains 12, hence 20%. Of course, this ignores any further shares the remainin founder might issue to himself by investing his own money or assets (he holds a majority stake, so that shouldn't be too difficult)
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Vesting of shares does not necessarily imply that you give anyone the right to fire you. For example, a company with several founders might choose to use vesting even if they never take or need VC funding, to deal with the case where a founder voluntarily chooses to leave early on. And while an arrangement with a VC could potentially grant them the ability to fire a founder, it doesn't necessarily have to, and I've seen plenty of cases where the founders did not agree to such terms (especially in cases of VCs signing on with well-established companies).
- getsat 15y ago
  > What is to stop the VC from firing you the day before your options mature? Perhaps they'd like people to actually consider taking investment money from them in the future? Your "cliff" is typically one year, anyways.
georgemcbay 15y ago
All money issues aside, 4 years is also around the time you tend to get really sick of working on the same problem with the same codebase. And that's an outside bound, when the problem and codebase you were working on were both good ones. The wall gets hit even sooner if you're working on something less interesting. All IMO and IME, of course.
- jseliger 15y ago
  All money issues aside, 4 years is also around the time you tend to get really sick of working on the same problem with the same codebase. Four years, incidentally, is also the length of time a PhD used to take, in both the sciences and the humanities. Now it's stretching towards six - seven for the sciences and ten for the humanities, which may contribute to burnout.
  - Jach 15y ago
    There's also some speculative research that 4 years is about how long monogamous love of a wife can last barring other factors. It's been a while since I read about it, I think it was reasoned that presumably because in the old days when you fell in love you had a kid and by the time the kid turned 4 they didn't really need the full support of the father anymore to survive, so the father can start looking around and try to spread his genes further now the initial investment of the one is complete... I didn't find much evidence supporting this view at the time, and indeed the notion of "monogamous love" was itself poorly defined. But it's still fun to speculate on why 4 tends to show up so often in human activities.
    - adrianN 15y ago
      Most (all?) evolutionary psychology reeks of unbased speculation sprinkled with sciency words.
    - billybob 15y ago
      Rubbish. "Barring other factors" is a qualification big enough to drive a tractor trailer through, filled with millions of counter-examples on both sides. Many fathers love their mate for life or at least decades. Many others abandon her before the child is born. Whatever explains this variance is not biology. What evidence point to 4 years as normative? What evidence suggests that a 4-year-old doesn't need a father? "OK, kid, I see you're walking and making sentences. Here's a knife and some flint. Good luck."
moconnor 15y ago
Relax? Start another company? Jeff has just had twins. This has nothing to do with relaxation, or for that matter vesting schedules.
- TimGebhardt 15y ago
  When my wife and I were about to have our twins we had read that it takes about 170 hours a week to take care of baby twins. Remember, there's only 168 hours a week. Now that they've just turned a year old I can safely look back and vaguely recall that: Yes it probably took about that much time to take care of the little guys. Good luck, Jeff!
  - eru 15y ago
    Perhaps they meant 170 person-hours per week? That would be doable by a couple.
    - randallsquared 15y ago
      I see that you're giving 110% trying to make that statement make sense.
      - eru 15y ago
        I had a friend to help me.
    - TimGebhardt 15y ago
      I think people without kids, when their friends with kids say they're so busy, don't realize is that all the work with kids is sporadic. You never get to get "in the zone" when child raising. I can't just change diapers for half a Saturday afternoon so I don't have to change diapers all week. When kids are first born they need to eat every 2-3 hours including night-time. And a feeding can take anywhere from 15-45 minutes, with a diaper change per-feeding. If you're in the boat that Jeff or I were in you were very fortunate if your twins were both on the same schedule -- offset schedule twins are exhausting and relentless. Oh, and 50% of twin births are C-sections and my wife was no exception. So her only jobs for the first six weeks were to recover, breastfeed, pump breast milk, eat, and sleep. Daddy took 6 weeks off work (3 unpaid) and pretty much had to do everything else until my wife recovered from her major abdominal surgery. Not asking for pity or sympathy. I'm just saying that I don't know how people handle newborn twins without help from friends and family. It would be impossible.

by staunch 15y ago

jfarmer 15y ago

It's common to re-up soon-to-vest employees with additional options, especially founders.

yarone 15y ago

From my personal experience, it's not just about vesting. It's about energy. For many folks, after 3-4 years, things just aren't the same. Jeff's baby is all grown up. He's poured his heart and soul into this thing. Time to catch his breath, refocus priorities, and move on to something new.

raganwald 15y ago
Perhaps (I am speculating, not dictating) this is exactly why four-year vesting periods work. If a large chunk of people burn out or get bored after four years, a five year vesting period would create sullen, unproductive boat anchors. A three year period would have people jumping ship to found something new while they are still able to bring their prowess to bear growing the company. But after four years, both parties have maximized their gain from each other.

finnw 15y ago

I've always been slightly surprised that founders accept vesting at all. What is to stop the VC from firing you the day before your options mature? Then you would effectively have worked for them for free for 2 years, and for a low salary for a year and 51 weeks after that, all at 70 hours a week. I would never give anyone the opportunity to do that to me.

rgrieselhuber 15y ago
Because your shares vest gradually over time, so that by the time you get to year 4, you're well over 75% of the way there.
mhartl 15y ago
The stock vests over time. Four years isn't the typical time for stock to vest; it's the typical time to be fully vested. Usually it's 1/4 per year for 4 years. Vesting doesn't just protect investors. It also protects cofounders. Suppose you start a venture 50/50 with a buddy. After a year, he leaves, and three years later you've bootstrapped the company into a $100m business. Without vesting, your cofounder would still be entitled to 50%. With vesting, he would get 25% of 50%, or only 12.5%.
- pmjordan 15y ago
  Sorry to be nit-picking, but the percentage of shares issued that the departed cofounder holds after 4 years would be 20%. It's not helpful to look at percentages during the calculation: look at absolute number of shares. If 1 share vests each month, the remaining founder has 48 after 4 years, the departed one retains 12, hence 20%. Of course, this ignores any further shares the remainin founder might issue to himself by investing his own money or assets (he holds a majority stake, so that shouldn't be too difficult)
JoshTriplett 15y ago
Vesting of shares does not necessarily imply that you give anyone the right to fire you. For example, a company with several founders might choose to use vesting even if they never take or need VC funding, to deal with the case where a founder voluntarily chooses to leave early on. And while an arrangement with a VC could potentially grant them the ability to fire a founder, it doesn't necessarily have to, and I've seen plenty of cases where the founders did not agree to such terms (especially in cases of VCs signing on with well-established companies).
getsat 15y ago
> What is to stop the VC from firing you the day before your options mature? Perhaps they'd like people to actually consider taking investment money from them in the future? Your "cliff" is typically one year, anyways.

georgemcbay 15y ago

All money issues aside, 4 years is also around the time you tend to get really sick of working on the same problem with the same codebase. And that's an outside bound, when the problem and codebase you were working on were both good ones. The wall gets hit even sooner if you're working on something less interesting. All IMO and IME, of course.

jseliger 15y ago
All money issues aside, 4 years is also around the time you tend to get really sick of working on the same problem with the same codebase. Four years, incidentally, is also the length of time a PhD used to take, in both the sciences and the humanities. Now it's stretching towards six - seven for the sciences and ten for the humanities, which may contribute to burnout.
- Jach 15y ago
  There's also some speculative research that 4 years is about how long monogamous love of a wife can last barring other factors. It's been a while since I read about it, I think it was reasoned that presumably because in the old days when you fell in love you had a kid and by the time the kid turned 4 they didn't really need the full support of the father anymore to survive, so the father can start looking around and try to spread his genes further now the initial investment of the one is complete... I didn't find much evidence supporting this view at the time, and indeed the notion of "monogamous love" was itself poorly defined. But it's still fun to speculate on why 4 tends to show up so often in human activities.
  - adrianN 15y ago
    Most (all?) evolutionary psychology reeks of unbased speculation sprinkled with sciency words.
  - billybob 15y ago
    Rubbish. "Barring other factors" is a qualification big enough to drive a tractor trailer through, filled with millions of counter-examples on both sides. Many fathers love their mate for life or at least decades. Many others abandon her before the child is born. Whatever explains this variance is not biology. What evidence point to 4 years as normative? What evidence suggests that a 4-year-old doesn't need a father? "OK, kid, I see you're walking and making sentences. Here's a knife and some flint. Good luck."

moconnor 15y ago

Relax? Start another company? Jeff has just had twins. This has nothing to do with relaxation, or for that matter vesting schedules.

TimGebhardt 15y ago
When my wife and I were about to have our twins we had read that it takes about 170 hours a week to take care of baby twins. Remember, there's only 168 hours a week. Now that they've just turned a year old I can safely look back and vaguely recall that: Yes it probably took about that much time to take care of the little guys. Good luck, Jeff!
- eru 15y ago
  Perhaps they meant 170 person-hours per week? That would be doable by a couple.
  - randallsquared 15y ago
    I see that you're giving 110% trying to make that statement make sense.
    - eru 15y ago
      I had a friend to help me.
  - TimGebhardt 15y ago
    I think people without kids, when their friends with kids say they're so busy, don't realize is that all the work with kids is sporadic. You never get to get "in the zone" when child raising. I can't just change diapers for half a Saturday afternoon so I don't have to change diapers all week. When kids are first born they need to eat every 2-3 hours including night-time. And a feeding can take anywhere from 15-45 minutes, with a diaper change per-feeding. If you're in the boat that Jeff or I were in you were very fortunate if your twins were both on the same schedule -- offset schedule twins are exhausting and relentless. Oh, and 50% of twin births are C-sections and my wife was no exception. So her only jobs for the first six weeks were to recover, breastfeed, pump breast milk, eat, and sleep. Daddy took 6 weeks off work (3 unpaid) and pretty much had to do everything else until my wife recovered from her major abdominal surgery. Not asking for pity or sympathy. I'm just saying that I don't know how people handle newborn twins without help from friends and family. It would be impossible.