Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k? • Hacker News Board

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#201

Post by TheMagicHorsey » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

slantedview wrote: post #197

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #64

Graduated from an Ivy League engineering program in the late nineties. Worked in four different start ups. Never made any money. Of those four startups I only count two as being valid data points as they were funded by "good" VCs. The others were funded by rich people who in retrospect did not know what they were doing. Now on my fifth startup as employee number 15-20 (not sure which since we are growing so fast). We…

Good luck on your 5th startup. I always wonder for people in your situation how long one can stick it out before decamping to somewhere more affordable to start a normal life (house, kids, etc.)

Well life has not been hard. We live modestly by Bay Area standards: one old car, eat out rarely, socialize with friends at home, vacation cheaply. But its still a great life by the standard of anywhere else in the US or World. We don't feel its a hardship to live here ... we have a small apartment, but not small by NYC or European standards. Just small compared to my brother's enormous American suburban home, for example.

We can't afford to raise teenagers here ... but we do plan to live here until our first kid is 2 (kid not conceived yet ... just planning ahead).

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#202

Post by quietone1 » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #195

quietone1 wrote: post #165

I was an mid-seniority employee and netted in the low eight figures when I sold my equity stake after our IPO. A couple important points I didn't see others mention: 1. When I got an offer, I asked if I could take a lower salary to get more equity. They said yes. 2. I pre-exercised all my options. So as far as the IRS was concerned, there was no tax liability when I exercised the shares. This meant by the time I sold…

It is absolutely not true that there is no tax liability when you exercise your shares, at least for commonly granted ISO stock options. Here's a site on it: http://fairmark.com/execcomp/isoexer.htm Basically, there's no "regular" tax liability, but the difference between the exercise price and the market price at time of exercise counts as income for AMT, and so have a great day, you're gonna pay AMT that year if yo…

You missed my point. By pre-exercising my ISOs and filing an 83(b) with the IRS showing that the exercise price and the market price were in fact the same when I exercised, the gain was zero, even for the purposes of AMT. Not everyone will be so lucky to be in that situation where the prices match, but I was.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#203

Post by quietone1 » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 7:18 PM UTC

nyrulez wrote: post #177

quietone1 wrote: post #165

I was an mid-seniority employee and netted in the low eight figures when I sold my equity stake after our IPO. A couple important points I didn't see others mention: 1. When I got an offer, I asked if I could take a lower salary to get more equity. They said yes. 2. I pre-exercised all my options. So as far as the IRS was concerned, there was no tax liability when I exercised the shares. This meant by the time I sold…

Interesting reply - 8 figures is enough for taking a break and do other things. Is there a reason you've still stuck to being an employee ?

Not stuck, I choose to be an employee. There's also a sense of loyalty since the leadership treated me well even when it wasn't clear we were going to make it, and I still enjoy the work I do. In some ways I picked the right company even if we would have never IPO'd.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#204

Post by Rainymood » Sat, Mar 21, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

bigcothrowaway wrote: post #145

Posting this under a throwaway for obvious reasons. Employees at Facebook and Google who are high achievers (top 2-5% generally) make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in equity. I am one such lucky son of a bitch and know many others. I'm well over 500k in cash after taxes at this point.

How does one even make 480k a year? I doubt it's 480k in pure cash. Do they mean salary + market value of stocks?

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#205

Post by stevenspasbo » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

blawa wrote: post #33

Well, its a company that its fashionable to hate on on ycombinator, but http://gizmodo.com/5019527/bill-gates-made-men-the-wild-n-cr...

That list left off Gabe Newell.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#206

Post by spinlock » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:12 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

Well in January of '95 I sold 1000 shares of Sun Stock that I had accumulated over the employee purchase program the previous few years. Sure it was only $35,000, this allowed me to purchase a car for cash rather than get a loan on it. When I sold the car in '99 to a used car dealer I realized the same 1000 shares, 4 years later were worth $1.6M. Granted at 1995 it wasn't a start-up any more, but it is an easy counte…

This is why it's important to dollar-cost-average (finance speak for sell over time) your way out of a large position. You'll never time the market so stop trying. Set up a recurring transaction that gets you out of the position over a sensible timeframe.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#207

Post by spinlock » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:15 AM UTC

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #201

slantedview wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck on your 5th startup. I always wonder for people in your situation how long one can stick it out before decamping to somewhere more affordable to start a normal life (house, kids, etc.)

Well life has not been hard. We live modestly by Bay Area standards: one old car, eat out rarely, socialize with friends at home, vacation cheaply. But its still a great life by the standard of anywhere else in the US or World. We don't feel its a hardship to live here ... we have a small apartment, but not small by NYC or European standards. Just small compared to my brother's enormous American suburban home, for ex…

Size is definitely relative. I just visited my cousin in Georgia and my house would fit in the play room he just added. He cleans carpet for a living.