10 ms·
I took the $300K
- nedwin 13y agoI'm surprised that they kept you on below market salaries after the acquisition. But I'm guessing that the bonuses more than made up for it?
- enjo 13y agoI'm more surprised folks fell for the "take it or leave it" gambit.
- pdenya 13y agoWhat's the third option?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kingkilr 13y agoNegotiate. It's always an option in my experience. (For example, I've negotiated the text of offer letter and IP/confidentiality agreements at most of my employers).
- namank 13y agoThats negotiation of terms, not the money.
- svmegatron 13y agoI think that generally money is by far the easier thing to negotiate than terms. Even if just because a change of terms often needs to be approved by lawyers, whereas a change of $ amount can be approved directly by the parties doing the negotiation.
- amirmc 13y agoI think that generally money is by far the easier thing to negotiate And here's something to back you up: http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/hvv2m/i_work_for_a_large_multinational_tech_company_i/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/hvv2m/i_wor...
- mikeash 13y agoIt is so fun to call someone's bluff like this. "The offer is fixed, take it or leave it." "OK, bye." "Waaaaiiiit, we didn't really mean it!" I've only had the chance to do this once, with pretty small potatoes stuff, but damn if it wasn't absolutely delightful.
- anon345345 13y ago(anon to protect the innocents) I have been through the exact same scenario: acquisition, take it or leave it offer of employement to join the employer. You know what? Go to your boss, in a non-confrontational way, tell them that you are underpaid, the market (meaning other companies) are making you offers left and right at much higher salary. It's not you who is greedy, it's the market telling you what you are worth. Then say you very much want to stay. The deadline they give you about signing the original offer? Let it expire. Until you do that, they don't take you seriously. You're just a whiny engineer. Once their deadline is gone, see who calls first. They will call you in a panic and find out what it is you want (you already told them by the way). Then they'll move real fast to make a counter-offer that is at least half-decent. Done.
- jrockway 13y agoIt's good if you also have an offer from a competitor. Then there's no theoretical game to play ("the market price is your highest offer, which is currently ours") and you win by doing nothing.
- yekko 13y agoHelps if you all do it together, eg, a union.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bconway 13y agoSome of us pride ourselves on not sinking to the lowest common denominator (i.e. breeding grounds for mediocrity).
- msellout 13y agoI'd imagine that the power imbalance of corporation vs employee creates a "lowest common denominator" situation more often than corporation vs union.
- 13y ago
- dmourati 13y agoI agree. This sounds like tough talk. I can understand why they would say that but I can't undertand why anyone would believe it. What they are really saying is look, we wan't to roll you all up and it would be much easier for us if you weren't comparing notes with your buddies. Fine, I recognize that we as a group have collectively a stronger bargaining position than we would if you had approached just one of us. Use that to your individual (or even collective) advantage. Hindsight, 20-20 and all that but the point stuck out for me. Anyway, sounds like OP played the game the way he wanted so props for that. Something to think about next time someone claims something is "take it or leave it:" get up right away and leave it.
- PallarelCoedr 13y agoThey probably didn't want them to stay around permanently, just long enough to complete knowledge transfer.
- djt 13y agocognitively it probably makes more sense. ie Im on the same wage but i can brag Im getting $300k extra. If they offered them market rate and an extra $100k it wouldnt sound so great and wouldnt make as much blog traffic ;)
- nedwin 13y agoI wonder if there was some kind of accounting reason behind it as well.
- msrpotus 13y agoI think salary is taxed at a higher rate than bonuses, which could be part of it.
- dmourati 13y agoNot true. http://www.thestreet.com/story/990258/1/when-the-tax-bullet-hits-the-bonus.html http://www.thestreet.com/story/990258/1/when-the-tax-bullet-... (though you said the reverse). "It doesn't matter whether your salary is $90,000 and you get a $200,000 bonus or your salary is $290,000"
- mason55 13y agoBonuses are generally withheld at a higher rate but in the end they're taxed as ordinary income.
- Timothee 13y agoAs mason55 said, a bonus will typically be reduced a lot when paid out (so that a $5k bonus ends up being more around $2.5k in your bank account), but in the end, when you do your tax return, you're taxed the same rate on your salary than on your bonuses. Think about it this way: on your W-2, (assuming the US here) gross bonus and salary are not separated into two different categories. Thus, it can only be taxed at the same rate. That being said, I'm surprised you'd say that salary is taxed higher… the typical misconception is to think that bonuses are taxed higher for the aforementioned reason.
- ndesaulniers 13y agoI like the picture, $8 on a cat. http://stuffonmycat.com/ http://stuffonmycat.com/ http://stuffonmymutt.com/ http://stuffonmymutt.com/ http://stuffonmyrabbit.net/ http://stuffonmyrabbit.net/
- ZirconCode 13y agoHow does one make a ban happen? edit: Did I miss something, all the other comments are good? =/
- azakai 13y agoAccount hacked perhaps?
- S4M 13y agoMaybe he got his account hacked or something...
- onli 13y agoSoemone should write him, he is on linked in and twitter: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nick-desaulniers/34/203/755 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nick-desaulniers/34/203/755 https://twitter.com/LostOracle https://twitter.com/LostOracle I have no account on either of that and can't find a mail address.
- Lightbody 13y agoNo, I think he's just commenting on the amusing picture of eight $1 bills on top of a cat in the original blog post :)
- gus_massa 13y agoPerhaps it was only one stupid comment. He saw the cat with the bills and remembered the cat's photo site. It's not a very relevant comment and it breaks the "no cat's photos" rule. But it's not extremely offensive or plain spam or tinfoil hat talk, and the older comments from the user look good. So IMHO I think it deserves only a few downvotes (maybe 0 or -1?), banning the user for this is too much.
- obviouslygreen 13y agoThanks for the counterpoint. It's definitely great that it worked out for both of you, but it's also nice to have a more balanced/grounded view of what happened to others coming out of the same situation.
- austenallred 13y agoThis goes to show that what may be right for one person may not be right for another, despite the terms being the same; all too often we fail to take external circumstances into account. Yet, at the same time, if you hustle and are scrappy you can always find a way to make something come about.
- zedpm 13y agoCould someone explain what he means when he writes "...the payout breakdown was 30, 50, 20, meaning that Microsoft will probably get a 20% discount on your bonus if you were planning on leaving"?
- furtivefelon 13y agoHe may have meant, if you quit after first year, you get 30% of the bonus, quit after second year, you get 30%+50% = 80%. If you are going to quit, you will probably quit after second year. So for most people who are quitting, MS would not have to hand out the last 20%.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago[T]he bonus was a life raft against personal debts racked up while living in San Francisco at a below market salary Never accept a below market salary unless you have serious skin in the game (i.e. founder-level equity). I probably sound like a broken record about this, but you have to assume that your equity in the company will never be worth anything, and—even if you are part of a 'successful' acquisition—you are liable to get an amount that brings you up to parity with the market...if you're willing to accept the golden handcuffs. Think of your options (or RSUs, or whatever) in a company as being a lottery ticket. Odds are, it won't pay out. If it does, it's likely to be a trivial amount. For the rare cases where things really work out well (early employee at Facebook/Google), please try to remember that you were really lucky.
- jessedhillon 13y agoI don't know why you're posting the same advice that, apparently, you know gets circulated here continually. In this case the guy got the base employee package, and that money allowed him to build a company that's on a great path. If he had followed your advice who knows where he'd be.
- aaronbrethorst 13y agoI don't know why you're post the same advice that, apparently, you know gets circulated here continually Because prospective startup employees get dazzled by promises of riches that, if they were to stop and do some basic arithmetic, they would know are highly unlikely. I hope that if I beat this drum long enough, more people will hear it. All that said, I'm glad that things worked out for Cliff. If he had followed your advice who knows where he'd be. He wouldn't have worked for "well below market rate" wages. That's for sure. Also, it seems somewhat disingenuous, given this topic, that you don't mention you work for Greylock.
- jessedhillon 13y ago"somewhat disingenuous" Well, that's a rather passive-aggressive way of saying nothing at all, but insinuating anything. It's irrelevant is why, I do work for Greylock but I'm not advocating that people should work below market rates, or even saying your advice is universally wrong. I'm saying that you are posting this advice on a story which literally contradicts what you are saying. The "I left the money" story would have been a much more sensible place to leave your comment. Speaking of arithmetic though: He received 80% of a $300k payout over two years: $120/year. On top of that he received a salary of, maybe, $60-80k. I think he did fine, and has landed well Your advice doesn't make sense for this story. It's like posting "and this is why I don't fly" on a story about an utterly mundane flight.
- basway 13y agoIt is all too easy to celebrate wild success as the "right" plan but we have to remember that success happens only to a very small minority and not everyone has the luxury to throw caution to the wind. For every wild success there are thousands of failures but of course we never talk about those. Glad it worked out for both parties in this case even though they took very different paths
- jcampbell1 13y agoMicrosoft's unwillingness to bump people to market is short sighted. I'd take the offer, then shift my hours to the bare minimum. I'd spend all the new free time learning or working on side projects. I damn sure wouldn't be all that committed to helping Microsoft beat google at search. This seems like the obvious thing to do, and not far from what the author did.
- SurfScore 13y agoThis is why big companies get slow and bloated. Behavior like this only happens when people are in it for the money and don't really care about what they're building.
- jcampbell1 13y agoFrom what I have read, Google doesn't operate this way. My understanding is they don't keep everyone from an acquisition. While this seems a bit rude fire someone or make talented engineers re-apply for their own job, it does mean the people they do keep become Google engineers rather than 2 year indentured servants who have no incentive to join the company culture. All strategies are problematic.
- taude 13y agoBack in the day (circa 1996 with my experience), MSFT made employees from acquisitions re-apply for their jobs and go through the full interview process.
- cad 13y agosometimes optimizely's cdn doesn't seem responding from Turkey or it goes just haywire. fyi
- yekko 13y agoThis is why you should NEVER work for below market salaries, you loose all leverage.
- cgopalan 13y agoI worked for below-market salary for a year and a half just so that I could get out of .NET development and start working on Python. Now after a year and half, armed with more Python experience, I have switched to another Python job at what I estimate to be at least market, if not above-market salary. Bottomline, never say never. You may have to take a temporary hit so that you get to do what you want.
- hkarthik 13y agoI did the exact same thing when I switched from .NET to Ruby. Took a one year hit to work with Ruby at an early stage startup and left after a year to join a Fortune 100 making more than I ever did in .NET.
- yekko 13y agoYou should NOT have gotten yourself into that situation in the first place. ALWAYS be looking.
- cgopalan 13y agoNot clear about what you are saying - what situation? I had a choice - keep working on .NET or take another job at a below market salary to work on Python. So I did the latter because I loved Python. This was with the goal that I would gain enough experience in Python to jump ship and work in a Python-based environment, back at market-salary.
- DelvarWorld 13y agoI'm surprised this made it to the top of HN. It's a poorly written article with no clear point. I wish he had put some emotion into the story.
- taude 13y agoSeems like there's a lot of upset people commenting abou the realities of a good startup exit explicitly pointing out the realities of a non-founder. Probably why startup culture targets youthful employees.
- nhebb 13y agoCompletely off topic, but the boundary logo is one of the coolest I've ever seen. Just wanted to give a public kudos to the designer.
- brendano 13y agoIt was great working with Cliff and many other folks at Powerset. I think I got cynical a little earlier than some of the other folks and left before the acquisition, so I might be less justified in my opinion, but anyway, On the below-market wages issue: I think Powerset's really crazy marketing/hype allowed it to hire stronger engineers than would have been justified given its product and technology. All the startup spinoffs he mentions (Serious Business, Crowdflower, Github... and later some more I can't even keep track of...) I think are an indication of that. I guess that's how you hire using equity. You could say it's taking advantage of the psychology of overvaluing low-probability, high-impact outcomes. Or you could say, those people were duped. I'm just glad for all the folks who, like Cliff, were able to take the bonuses to help support families or later business ventures.