Viewing profile — notbitter

Care to share some of that real data? You're right about the haze of wishful thinking around the issue and seem to be in a position to clear it up a bit. You can infer something ab…

For better or for worse, the system is named "capitalism" not "hardworkerism". In the "you can't cheat an honest man" department, you can be sure that some of the engineers complai…

This one is really stretching the definition of an acquihire. It may be that the $2-$5M is unvested stock for the team itself. See points 3-6 here: http://daslee.me/quick-thoughts-…

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4306256

The cynic in you is right. The employees have power in an acqui-hire, but they don't negotiate as a group.

If you avoid the questions "why was this written" and "how did it get from the author to my eyeballs" you will never develop a working bullshit detector.

Thanks for your passive-aggressive reply. My comment was directed at the author, not at you. I don't know what if any connection you have to the author. However, you should note th…

You are actually hurting startup founders by farting out this HN-optimized fluff of platitudes and having your co-founder vote it up. Please stop it.

None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do. Your friends sound young.

They are bullshitting you. Big companies can have rigid salary structures, but at a startup you have lower pay because that's what you accepted. The degree argument is a negotiatin…

terminology around this issue can be VERY confusing You are not making it any simpler by redefining "control" in this theoretical way. You are making some very naive assumptions ab…

Founder shares get diluted in a down round, but employee options go completely underwater.

Some of the advantages listed in the article are questionable. A talent pool so small that everybody knows each other, potential partners who are so out of the loop that they don't…

Google has some inner conflict here. The marketing strategy is "more private than Facebook" but the obvious way to measure the success of Google+ is by how much oversharing people …

This is human nature, not specific to geeks or men. If you call somebody on their bullshit you have to expect some blowback, even if you do it as tactfully as Jessamyn did in this …

Usually: millions to the investors and founders for their stock. Employee stock will be worth little due to investor preferences. The acquirer will pay hundreds of thousands to ret…

This looks like fake reporting, written by some SEO hack and paid for by the owner of one of the domains in question.

Totally disagree on #2. Walking into a better gig is easy, but it means you lose years of investment in the previous company (due to dilution, preferences, loss of retention bonus …

This is shockingly irresponsible advice. Standard investment advice is that you should become more risk-averse with age. Entrepreneurship is high risk and high reward. Why not "inv…

The most likely exit for today's startups is a talent acquisition. In that event, would you rather be at an "undercapitalized" startup or an "overcapitalized" startup?

Startups are risky to begin with, but raising a big round shifts the risk from founders to employees. Based on the emails I get from recruiters bragging about how much money their …

Sure, the VCs know how to take care of themselves, but what about the risk of putting your employees underwater?

Talent ... As a rule of thumb, these acquisitions are priced at approximately $1M/engineer Of which more than 90% will go to the founders and investors. The engineers being bought …

This is why Gowalla's investors are diversified across multiple startups. For them this is just one setback in a much larger game. The people getting screwed here are Gowalla's emp…

Because the common stockholders don't have a seat at the table. Instead, when the company decides to sell, the execs fully dilute the common by granting themselves the remainder of…