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Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

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Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#61

Post by prh8 »

chetanahuja wrote: post #46
lima wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure you look at Phabricator, too. It's great and the dev team is highly professional. Has a Trello-like work board, good project management and - most importantly - a sane and highly optimized workflow that works very well for a number of large companies and open source projects. I'll just link to another comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939608 Happy to answer any questions! (give it a fe…

One of the biggest weaknesses of gitlab, that becomes glaring as you add more and more projects, is that a code repository and a project are considered one and the same thing. It's quite common to want two or more separate repositories for an actual development project (e.g. frontend/backend or client/server etc.). Of course gitlab's problems arise from the fact that their whole reason for existence is being an open-…

BTW, Gitlab is working on big improvements to organization wide features. This was discussed on here after their big release last month.

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#62

Post by urda »

owenversteeg wrote: post #5

Anyone 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…

> Also, damn, that email from the CEO about his private Twitter. That's completely out of line.

It was a tweet regarding his company's platform, but using a competitor's. The e-mail really was not that bad, and that is what he should have linked. It would have been one thing if the e-mail was a massive rant-fest, and did nothing but berate him. I saw it more of "hey, do this instead next time" kind of thing.

> (also, curious note: this comment went from 4 points to zero in less than five minutes. Hmmmm.)

Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#63

Post by petethepig »

ryanbertrand wrote: post #33

Can the 83-B election help for taxes? I've done it as a founder not sure about options?

Doesn't apply here. 83(b) Election only applies to restricted stock. Because he was fired He can only exercise the part that vested, which is not restricted anymore.

With stock options you only file 83(b) Election when you do an early exercise.

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#64

Post by stevejohnson »

Whether the substance of this is true or not, it seems unwise to have posted it. It probably felt good to write, but now there's a real risk that future employers will perceive it as a negative signal. ("If we hire this guy, will he air all our dirty laundry in public if it doesn't work out?")

I have thoughts about whether his perceptions are accurate, but I mostly just want to say: kids, if you're thinking of writing something like this, probably don't. Go out for drinks with a friend and vent one on one instead.

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#66

Post by pfarnsworth »

hkmurakami wrote: post #47
nandemo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 normally don't comment on HN without having read TFA, but this one is way too long and I just skimmed over it…

A $20MM raise suggests a $100M valuation or so. That's a 20x increase in the stock price. OP's outlay would be something like $4000 + $35000 (state tax + short term capital gains. Less depending on how he hits AMT.). I don't think that's trivial, even if I'm off by a factor of 2.

It's the 409A valuation, not the funding amount, that matters. 409A value is usually much much less than the funding round.

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#67

Post by OhSoHumble »

I don't know how I feel about this blog post but I think it reflects poorly on both the author and GitLab.

I feel that a company should always give feedback to an employee who is let go. Whether it's a simple letter or an exit interview, individuals should have closure when they're leaving a company and it doesn't sound like the author received that feedback. Furthermore, if nobody - a manager, for example - explicitly says "your job performance is not up to par for your position and we need to improve that" before an employee is let go then that shows a lack of organizational maturity.

I think the gripes he had were somewhat fair; if a mid-level engineer is given a task outside his comfort zone and he communicates that he's having trouble then a good senior engineer should be able to provide design and implementation advice to the less skilled employee. In my opinion, that's a huge portion of being a senior engineer - if one employee is floundering in his technical task then you need to be there as a patient, understanding, and willing mentor. Heck, even senior engineers aren't immutable bastions of knowledge and should rely on their fellow senior engineers to be a mesh network of interlinking skill sets.

The email about the tweet seemed justified if a little petty. The author was expressing pride over contributing to the product his company was putting forth. While it could be argued that he should have linked to GitLab itself, it is a gray area and I feel that stark admonishment isn't a fair or correct response.

In the end, it's still a very public complaint and these articles are mostly frowned on. That being said, I appreciate that this Medium post exists. It's a point of view to take into consideration if I ever plan to interview at GitLab - even if the author is enacting the definition of 'burning bridges.' To conclude, whenever I read articles like this I always have to think "well, what other points of view are there to consider?"

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#68

Post by barrkel »

mixologic wrote: post #9

I 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…

CEO rightly advised

I don't think it's right at all. What gives him that right? Why is it morally wrong to do otherwise? What kind of right are you talking about?

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#69

Post by ricardobeat »

brianwawok wrote: post #34
jbverschoor wrote: post #11

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.

I cannot imagine running a business with those rules

You just pay them to leave. Expensive for sure.

Re: Why I will not exercise my GitLab stock options

#70

Post by angry-hacker »

Off topic but I hope this medium.com trend starts to fade. I can't read the damn thing on my mobile when there are social sharing icons AND green open in app icon floating, taking room on my small screen.

Why would I want your app or open it on app? It's s damn simple blog not some kind of webapp.

Svbtl.com was also a thing here time ago, why did that platform become uncool?

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