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Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

reuters.com

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Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#81

Post by chrisseaton »

adrianN wrote: post #78
Waterfall wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions only seem to benefit the union leaders. Union membership have long dropped precipitously for decades for over 50 years at least. Programmer are in no danger of being stuck like McDonald's workers. They're free to work elsewhere and the NDA are as good as toilet paper.

Unions are democratic entities. They do what their members want them to do.

At best, they do what the majority of their members want. Which may be completely at odds with your interests.

For example a union of mainly older members voting for pay-by-seniority and damaging younger people’s pay.

Democracy in a union can become a tyranny of the majority. That’s one reason many people don’t want unions.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#82

Post by dagurp »

bartread wrote: post #80
adrianN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Startups don't have a virtual monopoly on jobs the issue is much less pressing than with app stores. Of course that doesn't mean that programmers shouldn't form a union.

> Of course that doesn't mean that programmers shouldn't form a union. That's potentially quite an expensive trade-off. You give up your ability to negotiate so that somebody else will collectively negotiate on your behalf. That can work out well, at least for a while, but it's worth considering the longer-term consequences. E.g., in the longer term it can favour cheaper labour or cheaper competitors elsewhere. (Yes,…

Why do you say you lose your negotiating power? The union will ensure that you have the same basic rights (and salary) that everyone else in the field. That doesn't mean you can't ask for a raise or a higher starting salary.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#83

Post by kerosene »

dagurp wrote: post #82
bartread wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course that doesn't mean that programmers shouldn't form a union. That's potentially quite an expensive trade-off. You give up your ability to negotiate so that somebody else will collectively negotiate on your behalf. That can work out well, at least for a while, but it's worth considering the longer-term consequences. E.g., in the longer term it can favour cheaper labour or cheaper competitors elsewhere. (Yes,…

Why do you say you lose your negotiating power? The union will ensure that you have the same basic rights (and salary) that everyone else in the field. That doesn't mean you can't ask for a raise or a higher starting salary.

What typically happens with unions is the agreement will likely contain a salary guideline adhered to most of the time, which diminishes individual leverage.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#84

Post by chii »

eanzenberg wrote: post #51
kelnos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my understanding that early exercise is mainly only useful for tax purposes. You still won't be a shareholder until at least 1 share vests, which for a new employee, likely won't be for a year. Is that incorrect?

Also, you’re prepurchashing common shares. These are only worth money if the sell price is over the valuation of the last raised round

that's the risk of investing in equity. The employee needs to come to terms with it - there's no situation where this risk can be mitigated (without someone else taking a hit).

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#85

Post by fluffy87 »

Thorrez wrote: post #69
eric-hu wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like it would be very valuable information to the investors.

It sounds like it might be illegal, maybe it could be reported to the FTC.

Definitely illegal. This is fraud.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#86

Post by michaelt »

adrianN wrote: post #78
Waterfall wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions only seem to benefit the union leaders. Union membership have long dropped precipitously for decades for over 50 years at least. Programmer are in no danger of being stuck like McDonald's workers. They're free to work elsewhere and the NDA are as good as toilet paper.

Unions are democratic entities. They do what their members want them to do.

HOAs are also democratic and owned by their members - yet I hear 10 people complaining about their HOA for every person I hear speaking out in support of them.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#87

Post by luckylion »

khazhoux wrote: post #79
luckylion wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is a lottery: invest time in this startup, accept a lower compensation, but if it works out, you'll never have to work another day in your life after 5 years. The other isn't a lottery.

Employee equity is so tiny, only a handful of companies have been able to retire rank-and-file employees, even after big exits. Founders, on the other hand, do quite well in exits usually.

On the big exits, the early employees are often doing very well, but obviously not those that were employee 1000 or joined a week before the announcement. Founders do better, but that's expected, they also carry much higher risk.

And really, playing the lottery to win a million is still playing the lottery, even if others who spend even more on the lottery are trying to win a billion. Don't want to lose money on the lottery? Don't play it. I don't, and I never get a bad feeling thinking of what else I could've spent that money on.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#88

Post by zaarn »

kerosene wrote: post #83
dagurp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say you lose your negotiating power? The union will ensure that you have the same basic rights (and salary) that everyone else in the field. That doesn't mean you can't ask for a raise or a higher starting salary.

What typically happens with unions is the agreement will likely contain a salary guideline adhered to most of the time, which diminishes individual leverage.

Your overall leverage is increased through the union so you are more likely to get a fair compensation than before.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#89

Post by WJW »

trytozoom wrote: post #55
colordrops wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in summary you are saying it makes no sense to be an employee at a startup. There's no upside except for "lottery winners".

I've seen a ton of this on HN for the past couple of years, "Go work for FAANG, startups are worthless." As someone who has started a company, gotten it funded, and would like to hire high quality engineers, this is deeply disheartening. I've tried to hire a few people, offering them market rate or close to it for base salary (_very_ rough ballpark 150-200K for 2-5y experience) and a decent chunk of equity (highly va…

To rephrase the dilemma you pose: "FAANG has more money than my startup and the employees I want are mainly motivated by money". There is probably not much you can do to beat FAANG on the money front. Some options include:

- Go for less top-notch people. Do you really need the very best or have you just convinced yourself that you do? How do you even measure quality? I've seen ex-FAANG people bomb more than once at a younger company because they couldn't handle the lack of structure and immediately went about imposing Google-scale solutions and processes for a 10-person company.

- Seek out people motivated by something else than money (ie autonomy, purpose, mastery, community) and offer them opportunities to chase those things.

- Finally, your post is very focused on YOUR perspective as entrepreneur. Things like "there will be no options left in the pool for other people" and "then companies like mine and many others will die" are not problems for the prospective employee. They are under no obligation to join your company just because you really want them to.

Re: Former Zoox employees sue, alleging rival offer was better than Amazon's

#90

Post by nikanj »

michaelt wrote: post #86
adrianN wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are democratic entities. They do what their members want them to do.

HOAs are also democratic and owned by their members - yet I hear 10 people complaining about their HOA for every person I hear speaking out in support of them.

People rarely speak passionately about things they're reasonably happy with.
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