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Employee Equity

blog.samaltman.com

161–170 of 342 posts

Re: Employee Equity

#161

Regarding the question of knowing what percentage of total equity your stock grant represents, most companies that are not incredibly early stage will simply not tell you. Pushing the subject further will make you look like you're nosing around where you shouldn't, often leading to the offer being dropped (this has happened to me). Not to say it wasn't a not-so-great company to start with, but a dropped offer is a dr…

A reputable employer will tell you what percent of the company the stock represents.

Simply knowing how many shares you were granted without knowing how many total were issued tells you nothing about what your shares are worth.

If a company wants to issue you shares as compensation but won't tell you how many total are outstanding, run.

Re: Employee Equity

#162
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other issue with startup-bucks is their value is tied to situations that may affect your continued employment - They're not just a lottery ticket, they're a lottery ticket where "losing the lottery" and "losing your job" are correlated events, whereas if you're liquid, you can buy lottery tickets without this correlation.

There's not much job security elsewhere either

This is one of the things which we like to say about startups, but it doesn't stand up under scrutiny.

The competing job offer is Google or another megacorp. What's their turnover for engineers in a year? 10%? 15%? The definitionally average startup has a higher turnover even if we restrict it to turnover caused by business failure, to say nothing of voluntarily or involuntarily losing one's job.

If you exit a position with Google/etc, you have a network full of people who also spent the last couple of years at Google. You can easily lateral into jobs of comparable quality. If you exit a position with a failed startup, your lateral transfer is likely into another job which pays below market. Your immediate professional peers are also people trying to avoid the failure stigma. They may also be slightly busy looking for a job to help you with your own job search.

If you work for Google for 2 years and then separate from them, your 401k increased by $30k in the interim and you probably have six figures sitting in the bank account. If your startup is shot out from under you, you may end up counting the number of ramen boxes in the pantry while hoping that the startup can make good on its final payroll check.

If you work for a megacorp and are let go, it is highly likely that you were let go for firm- or individual-specific reasons rather than industry-wide calamity. This is very much not guaranteed in startups, where e.g. ebbs and flows of the capital market can cause a daisy cutter to hit the hiring pipelines at dozens of firms at once. You could lose your job at the same time that everyone else stops hiring. Ask the wizened veterans of the dot com bust who are, what, in their late 30s?

Startups are meaningfully less secure than working at bigco. Anyone who says differently either doesn't understand them or is trying to sell you something.

Re: Employee Equity

#163
I worked at a startup, was employee number 4, and the 2nd lead developer after the CTO, I got offered a pathetic 0.025% over 4 years. Options like that are disheartening and really don't make you want to stick around for 4 years getting paid dirt to eventually be able to claim your $20k worth of options.

I left and now am getting paid close to triple my old salary with options getting close to 10% in a business model that is far more profitable than the previous. I think lots of people just starting out in the startup scene get taken advantage of and taken for a ride.

Re: Employee Equity

#164
post #22

It's quite difficult to compete with Google and their revenue/cash hordes when it comes to salary / total comp. Especially if you price the options at the last round's price and discount them some more. Imagine a well to do company of 2 founders (in SF/Bay Area) and a team of 3-4 others that raised a seed at 10m cap. They want to grow their team headcount to 15 and are busy hiring, running servers, etc. They can offe…

It would be more realistic if it accounted for the expected growth of the company valuation. It's unrealistic that the company should be valued at 10m for the next 4 years - it's going to grow or zero. Also their salary is likely to bump. Just doing some quick numbers it might be realistic to give the same "EV" as google by granting 2.3% with no raise or 1.5% with a salary that approaches market over 4 years. I think…

The valuation is the expected value. And since we're talking about investors who get preferred shares, the actual valuation for determining the value of the common shares (which employees get) is lower than that, still.

Re: Employee Equity

#165
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 180 - 365 days seems far more reasonable. It's ridiculous to have the company shares tied up with the inability to give them back to other employees.

And that's why options are (mostly) a scam. If you leave before a liquidity event for any reason (they may not come, they take a long time, life circumstances, poor career growth, employers like to give shitty raises), you're stuck either investing often tens of thousands of dollars into an illiquid investment while paying taxes on it right now, or giving up your options. Sweet deal for employers either way. So when…

> avoid even telling employees what fraction of the total company their options represent

Actually that's pretty telling. If they don't give a number it means it's ~0%.

Re: Employee Equity

#166

Regarding the question of knowing what percentage of total equity your stock grant represents, most companies that are not incredibly early stage will simply not tell you. Pushing the subject further will make you look like you're nosing around where you shouldn't, often leading to the offer being dropped (this has happened to me). Not to say it wasn't a not-so-great company to start with, but a dropped offer is a dr…

I was lucky that my first job was upfront about what I was getting (%, # options, and outstanding shares). I like to think that I have enough confidence at this point that I would refuse a company that wouldn't tell me what me equity is worth.

Re: Employee Equity

#167

Completely off topic, but I'm this post made me realise that Sam Altman went from programmer to enterpreneur to financial guy. This post has very little ado with what he once started doing. He's a partner (and president) of an investment fund now, a pretty odd career move once you take the pink Silicon Valley glasses off. This entire post is about finance. Not about business, not about products, not about customers,…

I was half-expecting him to advocate a "less equity for employees" stance since, superficially, don't investors already compete with founders for percentages? Of course it makes sense on a higher level, e.g. when wanting startups to be desirable workplaces, or wishing for their own ecosystem to be a fair place etc. So, maybe not your average "financial guy"...

It's about as meta-strategy as you get. It doesn't just make YC look good for advocating better incentives to attract better employees, it makes YC look like a leader. And makes them look extremely smart for seeing the way to look like a leader.

Re: Employee Equity

#168
Tax laws make this more complex than it needs to be. It would be ideal to eliminate options altogether and compensate employees with stock.

Take the market value of a job minus the amount the employee is actually paid (the startup discount) and pay the discount in stock -- common shares (VC's will be in preferred). All employees should get 2% of salary as a starting point in shares. Allow employee's to buy additional shares by forgoing comp or simply investing. Peg share price and timing of share grants to Rounds or any investment (Notes).

Perhaps have repurchase rights only if terminated for cause. Doesn't matter if someone comes in for 8 months but adds value during that period, so vesting concept is eliminated.

Would need IRS to change grant from ordinary income to capital gain type of treatment where taxes are paid when some actual liquidity/transaction occurs.

Re: Employee Equity

#169
post #138
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why options are (mostly) a scam. If you leave before a liquidity event for any reason (they may not come, they take a long time, life circumstances, poor career growth, employers like to give shitty raises), you're stuck either investing often tens of thousands of dollars into an illiquid investment while paying taxes on it right now, or giving up your options. Sweet deal for employers either way. So when…

> you're stuck either investing often tens of thousands of dollars into an illiquid investment while paying taxes on it right now I am not really familiar about this area. It is a one time price to pay to purchase the stock options, is that correct? Furthermore, where does tax come into play? Don't you only get taxed if you decide to sell the stocks to generate income?

From how I understand it, when you decide to exercise your options (pay the strike price), you owe taxes on the different between your strike price and current fair market value even if you don't sell the stock. Most of the time, this counts as AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) if you don't sell the stocks within the same tax year.

Re: Employee Equity

#170
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other issue with startup-bucks is their value is tied to situations that may affect your continued employment - They're not just a lottery ticket, they're a lottery ticket where "losing the lottery" and "losing your job" are correlated events, whereas if you're liquid, you can buy lottery tickets without this correlation.

There's not much job security elsewhere either

No but at least if I lose my regular job I don't lose the pay I've already received.

If I'm paid $100k pa at Regular Corp and I get laid off after 1 year, then I keep the 100k I've already been paid.

If I'm paid $50k pa and 5,000 options at Startup Inc and I get laid off then I'll probably end up forfeiting the options which leaves me 50% worse off than if I'd worked for Regular corp.

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