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

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

#121

Post by smeyer »

patio11 wrote: post #89
mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind if I ask what types of jobs you and your wife have? I don't think many software jobs pay $250k unless you're upper management. Physician or legal partner maybe? Even with dual incomes $500k seems like an outlier but maybe I'm wrong.

Recalibrate your expectations of Valley pay in engineering positions upward. $250k is not outlandish in total comp (base + bonus + RSUs) for a 30ish engineer at AmaGooFaceSoft. If anyone wants to take bets on when that's a reasonably achievable starting salary for a new Stanford CS grad my money is on 2020.

I knew a Harvard CS grad with starting salary at AmaGooFaceSoft of (base+bonus+RSUs) of between $200k and $250k, so I'd take the under on 2020 if we're willing to take the upper end of reasonably achievable rather than the standard offer at the big places.

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

#123

Post by Eridrus »

growupkids wrote: post #82

The first startup I worked for, after taxes, made me over 1m and I was employee 42.

Would you mind disclosing at what stage of the process you got your initial grant, and how much that grant was diluted along the way to the final exit?

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

#124

Post by arturadib »

throwawayg wrote: post #95

I joined in Google in early 2005, post IPO, as an entry level SWE. I was probably employee #3000 - #9000 (there were about 3000 employees at the time). I made over $2M from stock options. Lots of people sold their stock as soon as it vested, in which case it would've amounted to about $1M. If I had held out until now (the price spiked around 2013), it would have been closer to $4M. I think people don't understand the…

This is the most thoughtful, balanced answer in this thread. Kudos.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

porter wrote: post #119
abstractbill wrote: post #105

I was the first employee at Twitch, back in 2007. It worked out very well for me, but - having watched the sausage get made - I'm very aware of how incredibly lucky I've been. It could very easily have all come to nothing. To be honest it's not something I'd ever advise someone to do, even though it did happen to work out for me. I'd advise most people to join one of the big giants and enjoy a predictably comfortable…

What does "worked out very well" mean? Also, what do you mean by watching the sausage get made? Not sure I follow.

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by johnnyn »

porter wrote: post #119
abstractbill wrote: post #105

I was the first employee at Twitch, back in 2007. It worked out very well for me, but - having watched the sausage get made - I'm very aware of how incredibly lucky I've been. It could very easily have all come to nothing. To be honest it's not something I'd ever advise someone to do, even though it did happen to work out for me. I'd advise most people to join one of the big giants and enjoy a predictably comfortable…

What does "worked out very well" mean? Also, what do you mean by watching the sausage get made? Not sure I follow.

I'm assuming Bill left out specific numbers because he doesn't want to share them. "Watching the sausage get made" just means he got to see all the details that went into building Twitch.

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

#127

Post by employee_equity »

Eridrus wrote: post #117
employee_equity wrote: post #61

I joined a company in the summer of 2011 that IPOed in the spring of 2012. Company was under 400 employees at the time (I was around #~380). The company is not Facebook or Twitter. My pre-IPO grants alone were worth over 1.5M, and my subsequent RSU grants probably added another 1M on top of that. I'm using a throwaway account for obvious reasons, but happy to answer any questions. I definitely was not an outlier in t…

I'm not sure if this question is really applicable since you weren't there for very long before the IPO, but do you know what the Series A -> IPO dilution of shares looked like?

I don't, unfortunately. The company had three series (A, B and C).

Anecdotally I know that the company was not super generous with early employees. Part of what it did prior to IPO was to do a couple of refreshes to make sure people had a reason to stay (and they were extremely successful in this, we've had very little turnover).

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

#128

Post by mahyarm »

abstractbill wrote: post #105

I was the first employee at Twitch, back in 2007. It worked out very well for me, but - having watched the sausage get made - I'm very aware of how incredibly lucky I've been. It could very easily have all come to nothing. To be honest it's not something I'd ever advise someone to do, even though it did happen to work out for me. I'd advise most people to join one of the big giants and enjoy a predictably comfortable…

If everyone followed this advice, there will be no startup employees left.

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

#129

Post by MichaelGG »

georgemcbay wrote: post #103
hkarthik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, talk about lost opportunity. I can only assume you're willing to talk about leaving so much money on the table because you got some other windfall a few years later!

Or it could just be that he doesn't base his entire self-worth on how much money he has accumulated or view himself as a failure because he hasn't maximized said money. I don't know which it is myself, so my presented theory is just as speculative as yours, but -- and I know this might be a big surprise to some here -- you can live a very comfortable, happy life without ever being a legitimate early-retirement-capabl…

Or cause, whatcha gonna do? I had 25% of a company, let myself get pushed out. New owners did a good job turning it around, sold it for over $20M. I ended up getting a few K. While not as clear-cut as making more money would have required positive action on my part, eh, well, this was years ago and just serves as a lesson.

Or when Bitcoin was cheap and CPU-capable and I started a 64-core mining setup but figured I'd only make a few hundred BTC a month and turned the system off cause a hundred bucks a month wasn't worthwhile (even though I wasn't paying for the hardware/electricity). Including throwing away whatever I had mined so far (a block or two?). Oops.

Or another settlement, that's under NDA.

Or not taking this prototype software I had (that's actually now powering the tech support of voice division of a public telco) and turning it into a commercial offering because I figured the tech was too easy. Then finding a similar solution with 1/100th the performance sold for around $21M.

I prefer to try to view these as inspirations, that opportunities are around and even random "nobodies" can end up in the right place by moving at the right time.

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

#130

Post by foobarqux »

honestfeedback wrote: post #96

I spent ~3 years at Twitter (2010-2013) as an engineer and manager. Made a competitive salary while there. Left with almost $2m in equity (ISOs + RSUs). I sold the bulk of my position quickly due to serious concerns about tying the bulk of my net worth to a single company's future. After strike price, AMT, and income tax I ended up with roughly $1m in cash. Probably could have been closer to $1.2m if I knew what I wa…

Why did you leave?
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