There are bad reasons to quit a company and good ones, but there are few better ways to make an exit than on the spot when the CEO of your company personally and publicly berates a low-level employee in front of the team.
Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#12I went through a long drawn out sales engagement with them. It seemed like a cool product at its core (basically a sort of meshed set of interconnected nodes that you could do live "natural language" queries against predefined collected data (i.e. "what machines are running ntpd?") but the stuff they were trying to sell on top of it at the time like patch management ranged from half finished to promises for future releases to things that ended up simply... not being true.
My perception at the time was that it was a good product for what it did but maybe after the demos were over too many potential customers said "so now what?" and they were putting pressure on engineering to release way too soon. And it turns out they were probably right, even though it was an obviously useful product for live reporting, detection and triage those things aren't appealing to managers so we didn't buy it.
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did I miss the part of this story where they said they had nonstandard vesting? The industry standard is 4 year vesting, month by month, with a 1-year cliff. The traditional horror story is employees being fired just before they cliff.
No, I just think GGP is mis-interpreting the situation because of the article's unfortunate wording. Once the stock is vested it stays vested. Whether it is 'worth something' or not doesn't matter, if you've got it it stays unless you sell it. I suspect 'worth something' translates into 'something for which there is an easy market', merely whether or not you can easily sell it. Whether this particular stock will go u…
My sense from the story is that they're being accused of ruthlessly terminating employees just prior to their cliff.
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
It appears that they were fired just before their stock vested. That's why as an employee you should never agree to vest all your stock at the end of a multiple year period but in small chunks over time (annually, usually). That still carries risk but not as much. Assuming you assign value to the stock at all.
Did I miss the part of this story where they said they had nonstandard vesting? The industry standard is 4 year vesting, month by month, with a 1-year cliff. The traditional horror story is employees being fired just before they cliff.
I think that's becoming less of a norm. More and more companies seem to be moving to 4-year vesting, distributed annually.
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#15I went through a long drawn out sales engagement with them. It seemed like a cool product at its core (basically a sort of meshed set of interconnected nodes that you could do live "natural language" queries against predefined collected data (i.e. "what machines are running ntpd?") but the stuff they were trying to sell on top of it at the time like patch management ranged from half finished to promises for future re…
Yeah, I think Tanium's ultimate issues are their firing of employees to prevent vesting (and thus erosion of control of the company) and actions by the CEO whereby he berated an employee in front of the employee's team.
You piss off your lower level employees, that builds resentment and causes employee churn, and if it was a habit of the CEO the other execs would likely jump ship as fast as possible (as they've been doing).
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I just think GGP is mis-interpreting the situation because of the article's unfortunate wording. Once the stock is vested it stays vested. Whether it is 'worth something' or not doesn't matter, if you've got it it stays unless you sell it. I suspect 'worth something' translates into 'something for which there is an easy market', merely whether or not you can easily sell it. Whether this particular stock will go u…
My sense from the story is that they're being accused of ruthlessly terminating employees just prior to their cliff.
Yes, so before the first batch of stock vested.
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#17I'm getting sick of reports like this. Setting up unfair vesting schedules and firing people before their stock vests... somebody should vigorously investigate it and put the CEO in jail. Startups are fucking hard work and a CEO stealing glory is a crime not a culture issue. These guys need fear of God.
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#18There are bad reasons to quit a company and good ones, but there are few better ways to make an exit than on the spot when the CEO of your company personally and publicly berates a low-level employee in front of the team.
Huh? Sure, the employee could sit through the CEO taking a dump on them in front of their coworkers, but if the employee has other options for employment, I'd say there isn't a usually solid reason to stick around a hostile work environment.
The bridge is already burned with the CEO, and your unlikely to burn the bridge any worse with your direct boss/coworkers by quiting immediately versus a few days/a week later. Might actually gain some respect from them which could net you a job later down the line at another firm one of your coworkers ends up at!
That being said, its all corporate politics, so it is hard to derisk it, and you should try to be aware of as much of the political situation as possible before making a move.
Edit: added last paragraph to clarify.
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#19I'm getting sick of reports like this. Setting up unfair vesting schedules and firing people before their stock vests... somebody should vigorously investigate it and put the CEO in jail. Startups are fucking hard work and a CEO stealing glory is a crime not a culture issue. These guys need fear of God.
Its just another form of indenturing workers, by holding these ballooning stock vesting schedules over their heads in the uneven employer/employee relationship. The employer gets stability from the employee, while being able to fire the employee after a few years just before they vest, saving the company $$$ and maintaining control for the current shareholders.
Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus
#20I'm getting sick of reports like this. Setting up unfair vesting schedules and firing people before their stock vests... somebody should vigorously investigate it and put the CEO in jail. Startups are fucking hard work and a CEO stealing glory is a crime not a culture issue. These guys need fear of God.
Its just another form of indenturing workers, by holding these ballooning stock vesting schedules over their heads in the uneven employer/employee relationship. The employer gets stability from the employee, while being able to fire the employee after a few years just before they vest, saving the company $$$ and maintaining control for the current shareholders.
> while being able to fire the employee after a few years just before they vest
Never ever agree to a vesting schedule where it takes longer than a year to get your stock. 1 year cliff maximum.