4 ms·

I don't care if the company fails and there's no amount of emotional manipulation that can ever make me care. Only double-digit percentage ownership could make

I don't care if the company fails and there's no amount of emotional manipulation that can ever make me care. Only double-digit percentage ownership could make me care. Of course you can't get double-digit percentage ownership of a big company like Facebook, but in a company that big there's almost nothing I'm doing to move the needle anyways so there's no reason to be concerned, any shares are gambles. I do care about my professional reputation. I'm highly skilled and understand how to improve social dynamics on a team, making me very valuable to have around. Clever leadership will figure out a way to align my skills with their own goals. But, if they don't, that's their problem.

ryandrake 3y ago
> I don't care if the company fails and there's no amount of emotional manipulation that can ever make me care. Only double-digit percentage ownership could make me care. That's the bottom line, isn't it? If the CEO wants to align employees' behavior and motivation with his own, he needs to structure the employees' compensation to be like his own compensation. If my compensation is just a "competitive" salary and a few token stonks, then I'm going to do a 9-5 job and hit the required 80% of my KPIs before I go home for the day. If my compensation consists of life-changing equity? I'll work days, nights, weekends, and holidays.
- HWR_14 3y ago
  How many people can a company scale to where they all get "life changing equity"? Certainly N<10 if you want double digit equity.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    You don't need to give each individual employee double digit percentage (>10%) equity for it to be life changing. Let's say "life changing" for a normal worker-bee tech worker is ~$500K and the company is an average, run-of-the-mill $5B market cap company. We're talking about a 0.01% share for each employee. If you have 1000 employees, totaled up 10% represents life-changing equity for all 1000 of them. Hoping my math is not off by a factor of 10 or something.
    - HWR_14 3y ago
      Does that ratio of market cap to employee count hold up often? I don't think it does. You think most 200+ Employee companies are unicorns?
  - Consultant32452 3y ago
    It's important not to confuse "I don't care if your company lives or dies" with "I'm going to be a bad worker." I'm an amazing worker. As I said, I care about my professional reputation. When/if the company dies I want every single one of my former coworkers fighting to get me hired at wherever they land. You don't get former coworkers clamoring to get you in at their new shop by being a bad worker. Companies want me to work for them, and former coworkers want me to work with them. I am just not emotionally invested in the companies who pay me a wage, I'm going to set reasonable boundaries on my time, and I'm generally going to respond rationally to incentives. Responding rationally to incentives includes considering if the extra work required to achieve a particular bonus is worth the effort, often it is not.

ryandrake 3y ago

> I don't care if the company fails and there's no amount of emotional manipulation that can ever make me care. Only double-digit percentage ownership could make me care. That's the bottom line, isn't it? If the CEO wants to align employees' behavior and motivation with his own, he needs to structure the employees' compensation to be like his own compensation. If my compensation is just a "competitive" salary and a few token stonks, then I'm going to do a 9-5 job and hit the required 80% of my KPIs before I go home for the day. If my compensation consists of life-changing equity? I'll work days, nights, weekends, and holidays.

HWR_14 3y ago
How many people can a company scale to where they all get "life changing equity"? Certainly N<10 if you want double digit equity.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  You don't need to give each individual employee double digit percentage (>10%) equity for it to be life changing. Let's say "life changing" for a normal worker-bee tech worker is ~$500K and the company is an average, run-of-the-mill $5B market cap company. We're talking about a 0.01% share for each employee. If you have 1000 employees, totaled up 10% represents life-changing equity for all 1000 of them. Hoping my math is not off by a factor of 10 or something.
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    Does that ratio of market cap to employee count hold up often? I don't think it does. You think most 200+ Employee companies are unicorns?
- Consultant32452 3y ago
  It's important not to confuse "I don't care if your company lives or dies" with "I'm going to be a bad worker." I'm an amazing worker. As I said, I care about my professional reputation. When/if the company dies I want every single one of my former coworkers fighting to get me hired at wherever they land. You don't get former coworkers clamoring to get you in at their new shop by being a bad worker. Companies want me to work for them, and former coworkers want me to work with them. I am just not emotionally invested in the companies who pay me a wage, I'm going to set reasonable boundaries on my time, and I'm generally going to respond rationally to incentives. Responding rationally to incentives includes considering if the extra work required to achieve a particular bonus is worth the effort, often it is not.