I think the meta-meta question here is regarding the value of stock options vs immediate compensation (salary + benefits). So many CEOs treat options like they will definitely be of large worth to a person- but for the average employee they'll never see anything from them.
Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#22Where's the negative ($<0) option? I paid for some options and they were worthless.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#23You might want to be more precise -- founder's stock, RSUs, private company/incentive options/nsos, and public traded options are all different and the same.
I've never actually received private company options; it's always been founders shares, even in a post-A company.
I've made maybe 600% on my money trading options (mainly AAPL and some non-tech companies; lost on TSLA but made money on TSLA stock), which is probably not what you meant.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#24Perhaps this is the wrong question, there are "how much money did you make on your options" and there is "How much money would you have made if you had sold them when they were worth the most?" You see I had some Sun stock left over from working there (about 8,000 shares) which at $60 a share in 1999 was $480,000, but after a reverse 3:1 split and selling them at $6 each in the Oracle merger they only netted me about…
I don't like to think about this, because my first tranche of AAPL options were valued at ... $42.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#25Perhaps this is the wrong question, there are "how much money did you make on your options" and there is "How much money would you have made if you had sold them when they were worth the most?" You see I had some Sun stock left over from working there (about 8,000 shares) which at $60 a share in 1999 was $480,000, but after a reverse 3:1 split and selling them at $6 each in the Oracle merger they only netted me about…
Ultimately the only question that matters is how much money was made. Dwelling on fantasies is immaterial (until you can sell or find a way to lock in the price, the market price has no bearing on your actual value). In your example, you can say whatever you want about how it was worth more than you actually netted, but at the end of the day all that matters is the fact that you realized 16K
Looking at the maximum value normalizes for someone's risk profile and financial luck/common sense. I agree with you that for your personal finances all that matters is how much money you got or can get, but normalizing for these factors is useful in a poll.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#26I think the meta-meta question here is regarding the value of stock options vs immediate compensation (salary + benefits). So many CEOs treat options like they will definitely be of large worth to a person- but for the average employee they'll never see anything from them.
I've never seen a dime from equity from a non-publicly traded company.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#27There should be an additional choice for people who have options but aren't able to cash them out yet. That would offer a view into the percentage of people who stay at a startup long enough to exercise their options.
There is an option for you. $0. You haven't made any money yet from options.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#28More than twelve users have sold stock options for more than $100M? Hello Larry, Sergey, Eric, and Tim! I would have suspected you were too busy to read HN.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#29There should be an additional choice for people who have options but aren't able to cash them out yet. That would offer a view into the percentage of people who stay at a startup long enough to exercise their options.
There is an option for you. $0. You haven't made any money yet from options.
Yes, but there's a difference between your options being worth nothing and the value of your options being unknown.
There's also a difference between the value of your options being unknown and the value of your options being known but you not being able to exercise them for whatever reason.
You may not care about that distinction, but I'd be interested to know what camp those "$0 :(" people are in.
Re: Poll: How much money have stock options brought you?
#30There should be an additional choice for people who have options but aren't able to cash them out yet. That would offer a view into the percentage of people who stay at a startup long enough to exercise their options.
There is an option for you. $0. You haven't made any money yet from options.
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