171–180 of 222 posts
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I'm not following how you're drawing a 4x valuation from vesting, but I'll admit that my head is in an SSL3 negotiation bug I'm grappling with while posting, so maybe I'm crazy.
$20k/year over 4 years = $80k
Rent subsidy makes no sense to me. It's a fully taxable fringe benefit (at least in the US, if it's not for the benefit of the employer like at a mine), and basically the same as salary, but people don't include it in the salary calculation. It's just stupid for the employer to offer it instead of the same amount of extra income.
Agreed. My theory is that people irrationally value free stuff. I spend about 3,000 dollars a year on work-time food (250 work days * 12 dollars for lunch/an afternoon snack). The way people talk about free food at some tech companies you'd think it's worth way more than a few percent of a typical developer's post-tax income.
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I can see it if you go out a lot, but for groceries it's fairly hard for me to spend more than $200/mo. I don't have a car, so just physically carrying $500/mo of groceries to my apartment would be quite an effort! I can't imagine how I'd do that unless I bought mainly stuff with a really high price:weight ratio, like steak or something, which I do occasionally, but don't eat as a staple food. Today, for example, I c…
> Nectarines Cook them! Throw them in a pot with some brown sugar and spices. Or throw it in a crockpot/baking dish with {1/2 c. butter, 3/4 c. flour, 3/4 c. (brown) sugar} sprinkled on top, bake, and shazzam! Cobbler!
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Yeah, they're fronting the other $1400 of the premium. We're a very small company and getting completely dicked by Blue Cross / Blue Shield. Doesn't help that most of the principals are senior people with families. I also chose the PPO over the HMO and FSA plans. I've btdt with those two and will never go back. Which brings me back to your first point. Yes, the healthcare aspect (especially in the US) is contextual.…
$2180 a month, $3000 deductible. Did your founders meet at a cancer remission support group? Or is it just that hard to negotiate for a small group policy where you are?
A tip for people writing on corporate blogs: let us know who you are up front. Whether there's a byline under the title or a short intro sentence/paragraph preceding the article, knowing who you are gives the reader a way to frame what your story. Because the tech industry is so heterosexual male-dominated, when I read that the author was engaged to the CEO, I first assumed I had misunderstood, then I thought the aut…
I wish good luck to all involved with this company. I am not sure if it's a good idea to work so closely with your fiance/wife/husband in a start up. If things don't work out, there will be more than a job that's lost.
While I can see hedging your bets by having your spouse work a normal job (and possibly get you on their health insurance), if a failed startup is going to doom your marriage, your marriage is already doomed.
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I wish good luck to all involved with this company. I am not sure if it's a good idea to work so closely with your fiance/wife/husband in a start up. If things don't work out, there will be more than a job that's lost.
Yeah, there will be both jobs lost. While I can see hedging your bets by having your spouse work a normal job (and possibly get you on their health insurance), if a failed startup is going to doom your marriage, your marriage is already doomed.
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I think that's a fair thing to assume. Full disclosure: I'm Dan, one of the other co-founders of Keen. I actually did the negotiation with Michelle - Kyle delivered our original offer. But she's one of my best friends as well. As is Kyle. As is our other co-founder and the two other people on our team. The negotiation was awkward, but I'm personally convinced that we're a stronger team because of our close personal b…
Did the team contemplate in making this offer that if something went sour in that relationship, you'd end up with a CEO who has both personal drama and potentially a very difficult situation in the office, given that she'd be reporting to him? How did your corporate counsel feel about this? Your board? If she's not reporting to the CEO, how does her new manager feel about having a team member who's his bosses' fiance…
Yes. Strictly speaking, if you get into business with your significant other, you are increasing the cardinality of the set of things that can go wrong with your team. For people that think like us, maybe that's where you stop thinking, and if so, fine. But the set we're talking about is very large, and I also know high school statistics, and so can observe that the relationship stuff is unlikely to be the event that blows up your team.
Believe in working with your spouse (or close friends, or whatever) or not. Either way: it has nothing to do with negotiating for a job, and it's a little creepy to bring it up here.
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Ahh, yikes. Sorry. I should've been clearer. I didn't mean (though it certainly sounded that way) that it's necessary for the reader to know your gender. Looking back, in fact, I realize that I weakened my position by even mentioning it (especially in the vague, imprecise way that I did). I brought up gender because it was confusing (and I, along with other readers here, felt misled) when you – very casually, I might…
Cool. Do you think the intro I added resolves the confusion? "Hi, I’m Michelle. I recently left my job as a technical consulting manager and joined my best friends and my fiancé, Kyle, at Keen.io (I wrote about that here ). This is the story of how I negotiated my compensation."
Another thing that made this situation complicated was that Kyle and I are recently engaged. This is a cute article but for obvious reasons completely inapplicable to anyone else seeking a job at a startup.
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I'm not sure what this critique has to do with the point of the article. This is, I think, a more careful (and lucrative) negotiation process than 99% of engineers are apt to us. The point of the post was to explain that process, presumably in the hopes of benefiting other startup employees. Do you disagree with the methodology? How? Let's talk about that, and not what you think about the blog author's personal life.
I think her methodology was sound, and knowing to use it at all was great. I just question the CEO/founder for low-balling to begin with, and I'm not sure if the whole thing raises the perceived awesomeness of keen.io as an employer (which is what you'd want on a corporate blog).