You should be protected by the dutch law. If you are an employee, you basically cannot be fired if you didn't do anything outrageous.
Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
11–20 of 211 posts
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#12So, Japan also collects taxes on the price of stock you don't sell.
Do most countries do this? I always thought it was a US only thing.
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#13I didnt really see anything here of any real substance, other than OP strangely thinks that twitter is private, and that the CEO rightly advised him to link to their own product instead of their competitors. I cant really see how thats a "run in" with the CEO. All the other cultural issues he seems to bemoaning are all consequences of growth in a startup. Information flow gets harder with more people. As far as the C…
>As far as the CMO moving on to github I think the implication was the CMO was fired and that was a poor decision, highlighted by her being snapped up by their competitor.
Either that or the CMO was obviously not happy at the company in some way.
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#14Anyone who just cares about the numbers: he was given options of 45,000 shares, of which 15,000 had vested. These 15,000, or 0.0833% of the company, were available to him at $0.27/share, or $4,050 total. So he had the opportunity to buy 0.0833% of the company at a $4.8MM valuation. Given that they recently raised $20MM at an undefined valuation it really says something that he chose not to exercise the options. I rea…
> Damn, that email from the CEO about his private Twitter. That's completely out of line. It regarded his professional work on GitLab: https://twitter.com/suprnova32/status/720396175954698240 I think it's completely appropriate that he link instead to GitLab for such a thing, and I think it's remarkable that he didn't think the same. This isn't like the ad world, where if your customer is Coke you can't be seen drink…
There doesn't appear to be a GitLab equivalent. And that still doesn't change that it was his personal Twitter with 146 followers. The Tweet got one single like. "Undermining the GitLab position" with a Tweet that has one like seems ridiculous.
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#15Anyone who just cares about the numbers: he was given options of 45,000 shares, of which 15,000 had vested. These 15,000, or 0.0833% of the company, were available to him at $0.27/share, or $4,050 total. So he had the opportunity to buy 0.0833% of the company at a $4.8MM valuation. Given that they recently raised $20MM at an undefined valuation it really says something that he chose not to exercise the options. I rea…
> Damn, that email from the CEO about his private Twitter. That's completely out of line. It regarded his professional work on GitLab: https://twitter.com/suprnova32/status/720396175954698240 I think it's completely appropriate that he link instead to GitLab for such a thing, and I think it's remarkable that he didn't think the same. This isn't like the ad world, where if your customer is Coke you can't be seen drink…
If a tweet like that can undermine their position then the tweet itself is the least of their problems.
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#16You should be protected by the dutch law. If you are an employee, you basically cannot be fired if you didn't do anything outrageous.
> You should be protected by the dutch law. If you are an employee, you basically cannot be fired if you didn't do anything outrageous.
Unfortunately, as a contractor, you do not have these protections. Given that the entire company is remote, only a tiny percentage of the people that work at GitLab are actually employees, and they take full advantage of that.
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#17This presents a question I've had for a while. Suppose I want a small number of units (say the 15000 he has here) in a company that's pre-IPO, is there a standardized agreement for me to buy it from him? While his past employer probably has right of first refusal on the units, wouldn't he still come out ahead if I wanted to pay him, say, $10000 for the 15000 units? Could they have legally pre-emptively blocked the sa…
Usually companies have a clause where they have the first right to buy the stock options back before you offer them for sale to anyone else. Employee stock options are sort of intended to be NODROP, and if they want to make shares available on like second market, they need to create a pool of shares specifically for that.
And when they exercise that right, they'd be able to buy them back at the strike price?
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#18I didnt really see anything here of any real substance, other than OP strangely thinks that twitter is private, and that the CEO rightly advised him to link to their own product instead of their competitors. I cant really see how thats a "run in" with the CEO. All the other cultural issues he seems to bemoaning are all consequences of growth in a startup. Information flow gets harder with more people. As far as the C…
I think the run-in referred to something different than the tweet.
> After the run-in happened, I decided to lay low and focus on the job. I even stopped posting on Twitter, because the CEO already had questioned me about what I was writing.
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#19As companies grow, their politics changes. It's a fact of life. You want to keep working at a startup, quit and go find a job at another startup.
If this bitch-fest affects his career at all, it won't be in a good way.
I've seen more than one developer lose their jobs over politics. One guy, I've seen sabotage job after job over his idealism. I try to help him but you can't teach political savvy to an unwilling student. He hears and understands me, then goes and does the exact opposite of what I tell him to do. And it has exactly the effect I predicted.
I maintain that the biggest reason developers can't get ahead is because they don't have the stomach for politics.
Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options
#20You should be protected by the dutch law. If you are an employee, you basically cannot be fired if you didn't do anything outrageous.
On paper he was a contractor, not an employee.