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Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

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Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#111

Post by landryraccoon »

goobynight wrote: post #88
brootstrap wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the opposite side of this argument. I was there. I was shit in college but managed a degree and self taught programming. I was hustling hard to graduate and convince someone to hire me as a programmer even though I had no degree. I was 23 at the time. If you are in this scenario, just you, no wife kids etc. What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? I loved the startup and it fit my perfect niche. I woul…

It's "pissing in the pool" for the rest of us. I know it feels validated internally because it worked out for you though. Even when I did a startup, I held pretty normal hours. Working on someone else's problem to make them rich is silly to me. I think it's something that you either get or you don't. I don't plan to convince you to change sides, but I'd 100% of the time rather spend hours 8 or 9 through 12 working on…

Wait, I enjoy my job, want to write code and get lost in my work and you think that’s pissing in the pool?

I know some people at work that sort of have your mindset. I think it’s the worst. Not only do they not want to help someone who’s passionate you now make me suspect they’re incentivized to undermine hard workers as well, since they make you look bad.

Fine, take it easy at work, I don’t care. Just don’t make it harder for people who are trying to get work done.

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#112

Post by dleslie »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #85
neilv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear conflicting ideas about who's getting the most capable people, and I don't know what's true. Maybe a decade ago, a knowledgeable colleague, speaking of one of the better-regarded FAANGs, told me, "First they hired the A students, then they hired the B students, now they're hiring the C students." More recently, the sentiment I heard among CS-ish PhD students at one big university was that FAANGs (or, at least,…

In my 10 year career, I've done 2 startups in the Bay Area (both early, one I left after Series A, another one I left after Series C) and more recently Google, and I can say the level of talent doesn't even compare in my opinion: from my experience, the engineers were so bad quality that I was feeling depressed and wasting my time most of the time (and constantly saying to myself "am I just a jerk in thinking of ever…

That's some incredible anecdata. ;)

I've worked at _very_ large multi-nationals where, in my anecdata, I've seen such hand-tuned monstrosities deployed.

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#113

Post by [deleted] »

goobynight wrote: post #88
brootstrap wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the opposite side of this argument. I was there. I was shit in college but managed a degree and self taught programming. I was hustling hard to graduate and convince someone to hire me as a programmer even though I had no degree. I was 23 at the time. If you are in this scenario, just you, no wife kids etc. What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? I loved the startup and it fit my perfect niche. I woul…

It's "pissing in the pool" for the rest of us. I know it feels validated internally because it worked out for you though. Even when I did a startup, I held pretty normal hours. Working on someone else's problem to make them rich is silly to me. I think it's something that you either get or you don't. I don't plan to convince you to change sides, but I'd 100% of the time rather spend hours 8 or 9 through 12 working on…

[deleted]

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#114

Post by iblaine »

IPOs are increasingly turning into an exercise of the Greater Fool Theory [1]. I'm not sure if it's investors or employees who are the bigger fool. Investors can fall back on ratchets [2]. Lyft may sue a bank for helping pre-IPO investors short sell [3]. What does seem to be clear is the widening gap between smart money (investors) and dumb money (employees).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fullratchet.asp

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/06/lyft-is-threatening-litigati...

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#115

Post by jboy55 »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #85
neilv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear conflicting ideas about who's getting the most capable people, and I don't know what's true. Maybe a decade ago, a knowledgeable colleague, speaking of one of the better-regarded FAANGs, told me, "First they hired the A students, then they hired the B students, now they're hiring the C students." More recently, the sentiment I heard among CS-ish PhD students at one big university was that FAANGs (or, at least,…

In my 10 year career, I've done 2 startups in the Bay Area (both early, one I left after Series A, another one I left after Series C) and more recently Google, and I can say the level of talent doesn't even compare in my opinion: from my experience, the engineers were so bad quality that I was feeling depressed and wasting my time most of the time (and constantly saying to myself "am I just a jerk in thinking of ever…

At a Startup, especially one that's "long in the teeth", the senior engineering team are those that have been there the longest and have the largest institutional knowledge.

"Why are there 4 unique keys on this table named masterkey, masterkey2, mk1, mk4?"

Principle Engineer. "Well, the masterkey indicates which key this was mastered on, if you check the masterkey db, which is just "id, timestamp, masterid", this is required to comprehensively log the creation date of the row to maintain the db's audibility in case of SOC audit.

masterkey2, refers to the masterkey2 db, which contains "id, timestamp". Any change to the row requires an update to masterkey2, again for auditbility for last modification reason.

mk1, contains "id, userid". Which is the user that created the row.

Finally, mk4 refers to the new mk4link table, which is a LinkTable that links the main table to the mk4update table. mk4update is 'mk4id, username, timestamp, creator' and contains a list of any changes to the table and a flag indicating this is the creation date. Have you done a SOC compliance report before? No? Well, all of this is mandated by the SOC compliance, its kind of ugly, but it works and is absolutely required."

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#116

Post by ohaideredevs »

goobynight wrote: post #88
brootstrap wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the opposite side of this argument. I was there. I was shit in college but managed a degree and self taught programming. I was hustling hard to graduate and convince someone to hire me as a programmer even though I had no degree. I was 23 at the time. If you are in this scenario, just you, no wife kids etc. What is wrong with working really hard on a problem? I loved the startup and it fit my perfect niche. I woul…

It's "pissing in the pool" for the rest of us. I know it feels validated internally because it worked out for you though. Even when I did a startup, I held pretty normal hours. Working on someone else's problem to make them rich is silly to me. I think it's something that you either get or you don't. I don't plan to convince you to change sides, but I'd 100% of the time rather spend hours 8 or 9 through 12 working on…

I don't think it sets the normal. We had a great senior dev who never worked a second past 8 hours, never did prod support during off hours, never picked up the phone on the weekend, etc. But when he did work, he delivered way more than the junior devs did. He works there to this day, at a great salary, with no pressure to work OT.

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#117

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

zrail wrote: post #73
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies should either: - award RSUs that have a liquidity event as the final vesting requirement and don’t expire (so you are not taxed until you can sell, and don’t risk losing what you already earned), or - pay annual cash bonuses that are “grossed up” so that the after-tax amount of the bonus is enough to cover the taxes levied against the employee’s value of actual stock or vested RSUs, etc., and ensure the com…

The IRS considers RSUs that don’t have an expiration date as being close enough to actual shares to be taxable income. There has to be a “substantial risk of forfeiture” to qualify for deferred taxation.

In that case, then only the second suggestion.

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#118

Post by nostrademons »

matthewowen wrote: post #71
dxbydt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “If you want to own a house, have paid-for cars, put your kid through school, put away savings, and otherwise be completely comfortable then you can do just fine.” lol wut ? if you work in a typical SF startup, you can do precisely none of these things. Like, literally zero.

SF startup cash comp for engineers is comfortably in the 150k-200k range, and often higher. This is series A, series B stage companies. If you have a few years of experience and are making less than this then I'm please to be able to inform you that you are underpaid. If you have one of those incomes at the higher end, you can do these things in the bay area. If you have more than one then that stuff is not hard at a…

You pay for it in commute time, though. I just checked Zillow; the houses that are anywhere within walking distance of BART go for $1.7-$2.8M, with the $1M homes clustered near the freeway. Driving across the Bay Bridge into SF can easily take an hour; hell, I know people who've been stuck on the bridge for over an hour.

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#119

Post by dleslie »

nostrademons wrote: post #100
neilv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear conflicting ideas about who's getting the most capable people, and I don't know what's true. Maybe a decade ago, a knowledgeable colleague, speaking of one of the better-regarded FAANGs, told me, "First they hired the A students, then they hired the B students, now they're hiring the C students." More recently, the sentiment I heard among CS-ish PhD students at one big university was that FAANGs (or, at least,…

I've worked at both (Google from 09-14, technical cofounder in 07-08 and again from 14-present, and also a financial software startup from 05-07) and my perception is that the kinds of problems you work on are very different. At Google you do rigorous engineering, you're intensely data-driven, you have to work at massive scale, everything you touch is a distributed system (with all the skills and pitfalls that comes…

I've personally cut Google's interview process short several times now; I get far enough to seriously reconsider, and tell them I'm not interested.

> As a founder, it's just one problem after another, rapid fire, and you might have 1-2 days to solve something that took 2 months at Google. You do a lot of hacky 80/20 solutions. You need to think big-picture on everything and understand how everything fits together. You solve a much wider variety of problems, but you don't really go into depth with anything. Rigorous engineering isn't really part of a founder's job description, and some people view that as being dumb or poorly trained, but you make up for that in speed, ambiguity, and breadth.

This is why. While I sometimes yearn for a little more rigour, I certainly do not miss change reviews taking weeks and months at a time, and projects languishing while we attend endless meetings which seem designed to _undermine_ consensus rather than build it. I find the glacial process of large corporations to be utterly frustrating.

Re: Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

#120

Post by deanmoriarty »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #107
deanmoriarty wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 10 year career, I've done 2 startups in the Bay Area (both early, one I left after Series A, another one I left after Series C) and more recently Google, and I can say the level of talent doesn't even compare in my opinion: from my experience, the engineers were so bad quality that I was feeling depressed and wasting my time most of the time (and constantly saying to myself "am I just a jerk in thinking of ever…

Are you happy helping google do what it does? Building a surveillance society and monetizing people? I think that it would get to me after awhile. Though when younger I probably wouldn't have thought too much about it.

I am actually very, incredibly proud and happy of what I do.

First of all, selfishly I am learning like crazy. I am able to work on the world's most advanced software defined networking implementation in Google Cloud, and it's just amazing and mind boggling.

Second, I create real value for a lot of people: the reliability I help improve has a direct effect on the happiness of the Google Cloud customers that run on our platform.

Third, even outside my Cloud business unit, while no company is perfect and there are clearly issues around data usage and centralization, I still think Google's effect on society is wildly and massively positive, it improves all our lives like not many other companies have ever done, so I have no problem at all working here.

But that's just me, I have no problem in accepting that your opinion might be different and you would never work there for ethical reasons, your (my?) loss :-)

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