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I find it repugnant that this is the top-rated comment on this site. The founders of a company have the right to allocate equity however they choose, including

by rscale 15y ago

I find it repugnant that this is the top-rated comment on this site. The founders of a company have the right to allocate equity however they choose, including the right to allocate a portion of that equity directly to a charitable cause they support. (A decision that can be more tax-efficient than allocating it to themselves, taking a distribution, then making a donation.) They may allocate equity to partners, employees, advisors, investors, themselves, or to people and organizations who they wish to support. As a founder, I am not "inflicting a charity" on my employees by assigning 1% equity to a charitable organization, I am distributing my own property, voluntarily, in a manner of my own choosing. You have no duty to work at my company. If you don't wish to help me succeed (for any reason, at all), you are free to work elsewhere. As an investor, you are free to invest elsewhere. Nothing is being inflicted on anyone.

alexkearns 15y ago
So it is repugnant for people to put forward views counter to yours and through a process of voting for that opinion to rise to the top of a list. I'd try another website. Plus, if you think that running a business is all about what "you" want, and employees are solely there to help "you" succeed, you may find "yourself" with a recruitment problem.
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- rscale 15y ago
  It's true, I find Marxism morally repugnant. That said, if you hold Marx's labor theory of value so dear that you feel equity holders should not be allowed to donate their equity to a charity without worker consent, that's your right. And to be clear, I'm not passing judgment on you as a person. I don't know that you're generally morally repugnant; we might agree on nearly everything. But we disagree viciously on this point. I don't care if an individual got the equity as a founder, an investor, an employee, an advisor, or a partner. Once they've earned the equity, they're free to do what they'd like with it, even if it's not what I'd prefer. I can't accept your arguments to the contrary. And frankly, I think it'd be a very unprofessional employee who'd be so bothered by an individual's personal asset allocation choices that they'd refer to it as having a charity inflicted upon them, simply because you provided a portion of the labor that increased the value of the securities.
mbell 15y ago
> You have no duty to work at my company. If you don't wish to help me succeed (for any reason, at all), you are free to work elsewhere. Your job in building a company is to hire the best, most mission aligned people you can and help THEM succeed. You seem to think of employees as nothing but bricks in the road to your own personal success. This attitude ensures I have no interest in ever working with you and it has nothing to do with the topic of this post.
- snowwrestler 15y ago
  But the opposite is also true--a charitable program can help attract the best employees if it is well-aligned with the type of people you want to hire. Patagonia's strong environmental commitment has helped them attract the best employees for their business, for instance. That commitment is solely Yvon Chouinard's decision since it is his company, but it's not inflicting anything on his employees--they love him for it.
  - mbell 15y ago
    I completely agree but i don't understand how these are opposites. I believe your comment speaks to my "mission aligned" point. My position is that even if I was mission aligned with Yvon, if he views his employees as cogs in the machine to his personal success I would never work for him, or with him.
    - Drbble 15y ago
      You prefer to view your employer as a cog in the machine of your personal success. You aren't quite there on the concept of teamwork yet...
- rscale 15y ago
  > You seem to think of employees as nothing but bricks in the road to your own personal success. This attitude ensures I have no interest in ever working with you and it has nothing to do with the topic of this post. You've extrapolated far beyond what is reasonable.

by rscale 15y ago

alexkearns 15y ago

So it is repugnant for people to put forward views counter to yours and through a process of voting for that opinion to rise to the top of a list. I'd try another website. Plus, if you think that running a business is all about what "you" want, and employees are solely there to help "you" succeed, you may find "yourself" with a recruitment problem.

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rscale 15y ago
It's true, I find Marxism morally repugnant. That said, if you hold Marx's labor theory of value so dear that you feel equity holders should not be allowed to donate their equity to a charity without worker consent, that's your right. And to be clear, I'm not passing judgment on you as a person. I don't know that you're generally morally repugnant; we might agree on nearly everything. But we disagree viciously on this point. I don't care if an individual got the equity as a founder, an investor, an employee, an advisor, or a partner. Once they've earned the equity, they're free to do what they'd like with it, even if it's not what I'd prefer. I can't accept your arguments to the contrary. And frankly, I think it'd be a very unprofessional employee who'd be so bothered by an individual's personal asset allocation choices that they'd refer to it as having a charity inflicted upon them, simply because you provided a portion of the labor that increased the value of the securities.

mbell 15y ago

> You have no duty to work at my company. If you don't wish to help me succeed (for any reason, at all), you are free to work elsewhere. Your job in building a company is to hire the best, most mission aligned people you can and help THEM succeed. You seem to think of employees as nothing but bricks in the road to your own personal success. This attitude ensures I have no interest in ever working with you and it has nothing to do with the topic of this post.

snowwrestler 15y ago
But the opposite is also true--a charitable program can help attract the best employees if it is well-aligned with the type of people you want to hire. Patagonia's strong environmental commitment has helped them attract the best employees for their business, for instance. That commitment is solely Yvon Chouinard's decision since it is his company, but it's not inflicting anything on his employees--they love him for it.
- mbell 15y ago
  I completely agree but i don't understand how these are opposites. I believe your comment speaks to my "mission aligned" point. My position is that even if I was mission aligned with Yvon, if he views his employees as cogs in the machine to his personal success I would never work for him, or with him.
  - Drbble 15y ago
    You prefer to view your employer as a cog in the machine of your personal success. You aren't quite there on the concept of teamwork yet...
rscale 15y ago
> You seem to think of employees as nothing but bricks in the road to your own personal success. This attitude ensures I have no interest in ever working with you and it has nothing to do with the topic of this post. You've extrapolated far beyond what is reasonable.