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Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

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Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#131

Post by Tloewald »

BurningFrog wrote: post #24
Tloewald wrote: post #19

I joined a successful startup about ten months before it was acquired for several hundred million. The deal somehow led to a lot of employees losing their options (myself included). There was some discussion of a lawsuit but it fizzled.

Tell us more about "somehow"?

If I understood the details I would never have signed the contract. At the time I was pretty desperate for a job (I’d moved to the US from Australia and my own company had gone belly up and I was living in Santa Barbara with a mortgage).

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#132

Post by deanmoriarty »

dyeje wrote: post #125
deanmoriarty wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you are doubting the information I wrote in the previous comment, suggesting the parent poster to not necessarily believe them, is disturbing. I can only say I truly got those packages and I’m an average engineer. I suggest you ask to the close friends you have working at FAANG if those are true.

First of all, I didn't read your previous comment and you are not the parent post of the comment I replied to. I am sorry you are 'disturbed' by my skepticism of random people on the internet, but I don't have friends working at FAANG so all I have to go off is my own experience and publicly available info. Based on those, I find it hard to believe how many people here post that they make 500k+.

I suggest then you download the blind app. It’s an anonymous app where people share offers they get (especially from FAANG), mostly to ask for negotiation advice. That’s where I posted my offers back then, as a sounding board to make sure I wasn’t taken for a ride.

You’ll quickly discover that either those compensations are real and very common considering how many posters are there, or the app is literally full of trolls pretending to have those offers and ask tips to other trolls, for whatever reason (except that they need to have a valid FAANG email account to post, so go figure why they would lie).

And there are many other resources to vet those numbers, such as http://levels.fyi or advice from “trusted” folks in the software community like patio11: https://mobile.twitter.com/patio11/status/100632191192687001...

As to why I am disturbed: people who don’t believe average software engineers can make that much are the reason why many employers don’t pay that much, so they drive down the overall compensation in the industry. If all software engineers were more aware of their market value, there would be less discrepancy in compensation, such as in other mature fields (e.g. doctors, lawyers). So, the fact you don’t believe me it’s disturbing because it’s directly affecting the job market I’m in.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#133

Post by neilk »

~$1.5K, circa 2003

This is the one startup I worked for that exited. I was only there for a little over a year. But for a few months, they couldn't make payroll and issued stock instead.

Ironically it was the project that I was working on which ultimately led to the acquisition. Not really because I was writing brilliant code though, so I'm not bitter about that.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#134

Post by dyeje »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #132
dyeje wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I didn't read your previous comment and you are not the parent post of the comment I replied to. I am sorry you are 'disturbed' by my skepticism of random people on the internet, but I don't have friends working at FAANG so all I have to go off is my own experience and publicly available info. Based on those, I find it hard to believe how many people here post that they make 500k+.

I suggest then you download the blind app. It’s an anonymous app where people share offers they get (especially from FAANG), mostly to ask for negotiation advice. That’s where I posted my offers back then, as a sounding board to make sure I wasn’t taken for a ride. You’ll quickly discover that either those compensations are real and very common considering how many posters are there, or the app is literally full of t…

The sample size for levels.fyi is small and in Jeff Atwood's reply to patio11 only 7% of responders said they make over 400k+. I don't doubt that there are people out there (or even you) making that much, I just don't believe every rando on HN that chimes in to a salary thread saying they do. Sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

That said, would love if someone made a site dedicated to collecting these offer letters. Would certainly help next time I'm job hunting.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#135

Post by CoconutPilot »

I joined a startup in 2000. All employees starting before me were offered ~50k shares in the company as part of compensation while I was offered ~50k options. I was told options were the more correct way of doing way of doing things and other than the strike price they were essentially the same.

As a junior employee who didn't know any better (and no negotiation leverage anyway) I accepted the deal. Fast forward a couple of years and as a potential sale of the company approached it was announced that the stock was going to split 10 for 1. What this means is everyone with shares now had 10x, while option numbers were unaffected (ignoring that the stock price is now 10% of what it was).

When the company was bought the price per share was equal to the strike price of a second grant of options I had, making them worthless. I suspect most of the employee options were at this strike price.

A fellow employee with shares made 40x what I did for starting a month earlier. My payout was <$30k.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#136

Post by icedchai »

CoconutPilot wrote: post #135

I joined a startup in 2000. All employees starting before me were offered ~50k shares in the company as part of compensation while I was offered ~50k options. I was told options were the more correct way of doing way of doing things and other than the strike price they were essentially the same. As a junior employee who didn't know any better (and no negotiation leverage anyway) I accepted the deal. Fast forward a co…

This doesn't make sense. Options should have been adjusted for the split.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#137

Post by nojvek »

pm90 wrote: post #107
mikekchar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People win the lottery. You don't ask "Am I doing something wrong. I bought a ticket too and didn't win anything". These huge bonuses, etc are handed out to people who either have really scarce skills or get lucky. Wikipedia[1] says there are nearly 4 million software developers in the US. If each were to receive a million dollars, then it would total up to 4 trillion USD (using US ways of naming large numbers). The…

Nobody makes a million dollars a year. Read the comment... it’s over their entire tenure at the company.

Even 4 years at FANG with million in savings is laughable. You gotta be pretty high up the ladder. It is definitely not the average.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#138

Post by magneticnorth »

I got lucky; they had a successful IPO and I made around 150k based on working there 1.5 years. I joined fairly late (employee 400-something) at a startup that was very secretive about their finances and customers, but clearly doing well, if you were paying attention:

They had taken on a relatively small amount of VC funding when I joined, so just doing the math on the number of high-quality employees and the fact that they were making market-rate salary offers made it obvious that they had been successfully running on their business model for a long time, even though they wouldn't disclose finances or customer numbers to non-employees. And sure enough, they eventually IPO'ed as a company that had been (mostly) profitable for a while.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#139

Post by seaurchin »

CoconutPilot wrote: post #135

I joined a startup in 2000. All employees starting before me were offered ~50k shares in the company as part of compensation while I was offered ~50k options. I was told options were the more correct way of doing way of doing things and other than the strike price they were essentially the same. As a junior employee who didn't know any better (and no negotiation leverage anyway) I accepted the deal. Fast forward a co…

are there any situations in which it makes sense for an employee to exercise vested options "early"? namely, while still employed by the company and with no plans of leaving anytime soon. I'm curious because it sounds like shares and options were treated differently in the above scenario.
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