Somebody forgot to water their crops... For those of you asking about pre-purchasing your stock, you can exercise options prior to full vesting, but the stock is still subject to vesting, so you can lose them through termination etc., afaik...
Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
191–200 of 383 posts
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most disturbing thing that I noticed was this: a person's status in the business world (or at least certain sectors of it) seems to be perfectly correlated with how they'd probably score on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist I'm not making some superficial political statement either. I noticed it in myself. There were people I worked with that I completely hated yet... when they were pr…
A psychopath as defined by Hare will never kill for you. At least, not in the sense you mean by "kill", which is probably "go to extreme lengths". They quite likely would kill for you, under the right circumstance - but only if it served their purpose and only because taking a life doesn't carry any particular emotional connotation for them. The scariest thing about realizing you're surrounded by psychopaths is knowi…
You should read Blindsight by Peter Watts. It's about this topic, and is basically an evolutionary dynamics horror story.
The term you're looking for is "nonsentient."
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, they will only have one IPO. But the PR backlash can seriously affect it, if it's made clear to everyone that the execs are crooks, and that they'll never be able to hire talents again.
The poster child here is Groupon (GRPN) and while the poor choices of their executives did negatively affect the IPO they are still (11/9) trading above their IPO price of $20 ($24.50 when I glanced).
There market cap is still well below what their first IPO was going to be set at.
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you be willing to do an anonymous AMA, or write up some of your experiences?
I'll do a quick summary. Episode 1: (this is the one that most directly affected me) I was working on a very interesting but somewhat far-off technology. I did some tech talks about it, and put them on Google Video. Was approached by a guy who said he was a wealthy early-stage technology investor. He showed me a lot of stuff that indicated that this was the case, had a lot of real people vouching for him, etc. He mad…
In the drugs business someone who does what Zynga is trying to do now won't last long. Literally.
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#195Someone takes Mafia Wars too seriously in there...
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is an inaccurate view of the situation. Unvested shares are not equity. You are acting as if they are being asked to give away something that they own; they are being asked to give up future compensation. I put this in another comment: "However the problem with your math (and most others in this thread) is this: lets say Zynga values me at 4 shares, and I get 1 vested per year. However after two years, and a few…
The company didn't hire you to work as a 4-share employee, they hired you to work as a 4-share employee with significant upside potential . That is how early startup employees are compensated for the increased risk and lesser salary they take on.
Yes, you and your sibling threads are all correct, but it's not extortion. It's immoral and will certainly hurt them in the future, but it's not extortion.
I am simply trying to explain why this is a moral issue and not a legal issue.
This is the equivalent of saying: 'your gonna have to take a pay cut or were gonna have to let you go'. It is morally repugnant and goes against everything we believe in the startup community, but it is not illegal, nor should it be.
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you be willing to do an anonymous AMA, or write up some of your experiences?
I'll do a quick summary. Episode 1: (this is the one that most directly affected me) I was working on a very interesting but somewhat far-off technology. I did some tech talks about it, and put them on Google Video. Was approached by a guy who said he was a wealthy early-stage technology investor. He showed me a lot of stuff that indicated that this was the case, had a lot of real people vouching for him, etc. He mad…
> Do they actually teach this s--t in business school? What the hell?
"If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school." - George Monbiot
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
as an executive, do you think that zynga's executive team gave any thought to the bad press this might generate and the talent that this might scare away? From my perspective, this sort of thing scares me away from companies, because they might do it again in the future.
It's not like Zynga will have another IPO in the future, or will need to promise future employees equity. Precisely why "trust" should never be a part of an equity negotiation. When millions are on the table people will do whatever they can get away with. Zynga doesn't want another "google chef", but they took full advantage of the "google chef" when promising equity to early employees.
Even if they never give out another share of equity, hiring always involves promises about the future - compensation, bonuses, security, opportunity for advancement - that can't be written into the contract. I'd have to think the discount rate for those promises just jumped significantly.
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#199Let's give them a taste of their own medicine. They grew off exploiting the Facebook feed and twitter.
I started #boycottZynga on twitter. Please retweet. If we get the message out and convince people to stop playing before IPO, we can hurt their valuation.
Then they'll realize they can't just bully normal people.
Re: Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
#200Is it just me or is tech particularly sleazy right now?
Tech all over.
Earlier this year, one such sociopath latched onto my sister and she convinced me to get involved. As soon as the project looked like it was going to get released, the sociopath tried to dilute my sister's and my shares from 1/3 each to 1/20th each. He wanted to bring in partners that he had previously screwed over to make something up to them by screwing us.