141–150 of 553 posts
A lot of bias against startups in the comments. These are missing (1) how terrible the working conditions in bigco have become in the meantime (2) truly good startups (they exist) that pay solid base salaries
Engineers: always negotiate for higher base salaries. In the vast majority of cases—especially during acquihires—your equity will be worth little or nothing. Founders and VCs still get paid; employees rarely do. Don't just accept promises. Ask for the 409A valuation, liquidation preferences, and pay bands. If a company won’t provide transparency, that’s your signal. Equity is a lottery ticket. Salary is money in the…
The only time it ever makes sense to push for more salary instead is if you literally cannot get a job at a public company (or even a near IPO unicorn). Plenty of startup employees can, so clearly they believe their startup equity is worth something.
Financially speaking, startup equity is actually worth a lot as an employee (https://www.amafinance.org/startup_comp/). Yah, over 50% it's going nowhere but expectation needs to consider how huge the win is even if it is lower probability.
Why do people care so much about what some random guy did in a company acquisition?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but if you're 10+ years into your career and have been financially conservative (i.e. have a positive net worth), a lump sum of $1m could be enough to retire to a lower-cost location.
Hell, roughly $600,000-800,000 is enough to lean FIRE, the last time I checked.
Engineers: always negotiate for higher base salaries. In the vast majority of cases—especially during acquihires—your equity will be worth little or nothing. Founders and VCs still get paid; employees rarely do. Don't just accept promises. Ask for the 409A valuation, liquidation preferences, and pay bands. If a company won’t provide transparency, that’s your signal. Equity is a lottery ticket. Salary is money in the…
I tell every engineer always to maximize their cash comp and every founder and investor always says "No, that's such a bad idea! Get more equity!" Yeah, because that is in your interests, not the engineer's.
I always take more equity. I wouldn't work for you in the first place if I didn't believe in your equity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They got paid out as well. Meta pulled the same thing recently. So, a new trend where big tech “buys out” a startup in a way that only early VCs, founders and top managers get any value.
Seems like that makes options completely useless. If they had actual shares they could at least sue because majority shareholders have a duty not to completely screw over the minority.
Engineers: always negotiate for higher base salaries. In the vast majority of cases—especially during acquihires—your equity will be worth little or nothing. Founders and VCs still get paid; employees rarely do. Don't just accept promises. Ask for the 409A valuation, liquidation preferences, and pay bands. If a company won’t provide transparency, that’s your signal. Equity is a lottery ticket. Salary is money in the…
Under any normal circumstance I've ever seen, you should be taking the higher equity/lower salary combination and should focus on equity rather than salary. The only time it ever makes sense to push for more salary instead is if you literally cannot get a job at a public company (or even a near IPO unicorn). Plenty of startup employees can, so clearly they believe their startup equity is worth something. Financially…
yes that's literally the definition of expectation value...... so
ev = 1 bagillion * 0.0000000000000001 = ~0
Engineers: always negotiate for higher base salaries. In the vast majority of cases—especially during acquihires—your equity will be worth little or nothing. Founders and VCs still get paid; employees rarely do. Don't just accept promises. Ask for the 409A valuation, liquidation preferences, and pay bands. If a company won’t provide transparency, that’s your signal. Equity is a lottery ticket. Salary is money in the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1m isn't enough to really retire in in silicon valley
Take a million, go live literally anywhere that isn't Silicon Valley, remote work for a company that interests you, or your own project. There's very few currencies in the world in which 1M isn't enough to retire. USD isn't one of them.
Unless you're planning on retiring as cheaply as humanly possible, 1M is not enough to retire for the large majority of the currencies in the world.