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Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

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Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#251

Post by supportengineer »

0x00000000 wrote: post #233
kstrauser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of house had you been dreaming of? I live in SF, and even here $3M goes an awfully freaking long way.

anything within 45 minutes of your office in palo alto (where you are mandated to show up 5 days a week). this will get you a 1300sqft piece of shit built in 1964 with asbestos and lead paint and lead pipes and a cracked foundation (also some dipshit realtor had them paint all the original wood beams and paneling inside gloss white and replace the original wood and slate floors with grey vinyl) from some baby boomer…

All of this

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#252

Post by [deleted] »

fusslo wrote: post #202
dehrmann wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, aren't the C Suite and directors failing their fiduciary responsibility? I know they have broad freedoms, but when you're reducing an a minority shareholder's equity by 95%, it's well past "fiduciary responsibility" and looking like fraud.

I am convinced every executive and wanna-be executive is on the 'inside joke' of funneling money out of the company into their pockets. I am also convinced that investors believe it's the C Suite's responsibility to tear away any equity from employees to leave the largest pot for investors.

[deleted]

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#253

Post by supportengineer »

anukin wrote: post #231
kstrauser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of house had you been dreaming of? I live in SF, and even here $3M goes an awfully freaking long way.

Maybe OP wants a house in atherton next to andreessen.

This is the cheapest house in Atherton at this moment

$4.888

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/86-Rittenhouse-Ave-Athert...

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#254

Post by kstrauser »

0x00000000 wrote: post #233
kstrauser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of house had you been dreaming of? I live in SF, and even here $3M goes an awfully freaking long way.

anything within 45 minutes of your office in palo alto (where you are mandated to show up 5 days a week). this will get you a 1300sqft piece of shit built in 1964 with asbestos and lead paint and lead pipes and a cracked foundation (also some dipshit realtor had them paint all the original wood beams and paneling inside gloss white and replace the original wood and slate floors with grey vinyl) from some baby boomer…

Or you could spend half that in the heart of SF and have a nice place in a decent neighborhood: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1265-Union-St-San-Francis...

It's not that it's cheap here, not by any measure, but it's not nearly so dire as y'all want to claim.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#255

Post by cortesoft »

CalChris wrote: post #160
gsibble wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is another variable. Find better companies to work for. If you don't think this is a unicorn, don't work for them. If this is another stablecoin startup leveraging quantum AI then you deserve what you get, cash comp or no.

It doesn’t matter if you think it is a unicorn or not, it is about risk management.

Early stage investors know that even the best startups have a fairly low chance of success, which is why they diversify by investing in a lot of them. The many failures are paid for by the few successes.

As an employee, you are only given stock in the one company you work for. Even if you think it will be a success, it isn’t smart to put all your eggs into that one basket. No investor would do that, and no employee should either.

If you are working at a startup, a lot of your eggs are already in that basket; your ongoing salary is dependent on the company continuing to succeed. If you take less cash for more equity, you are putting even more eggs into that same basket. If it fails, you are going to lose all the equity AND your salary.

You don’t want your investment risk and your salary risk to be that correlated.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#256

Post by labster »

0x00000000 wrote: post #233
kstrauser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of house had you been dreaming of? I live in SF, and even here $3M goes an awfully freaking long way.

anything within 45 minutes of your office in palo alto (where you are mandated to show up 5 days a week). this will get you a 1300sqft piece of shit built in 1964 with asbestos and lead paint and lead pipes and a cracked foundation (also some dipshit realtor had them paint all the original wood beams and paneling inside gloss white and replace the original wood and slate floors with grey vinyl) from some baby boomer…

You should have bought in when Prop 13 went into effect, you’d only be paying $3k in property taxes today instead of $40k.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#257

Post by cortesoft »

tensor wrote: post #152
gsibble wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are more than enough stories about employees complaining that they didn't get a big enough payout on an acquisition or IPO to know that this isn't true. It all comes down to your risk reward preference. Sure, if you don't want to take a risk then look for a higher salary, and probably at a more established company because even if you have mostly salary and little equity a startup is still risky (and you're maki…

The problem is that your risk is compounded because your equity risk is correlated with your salary risk - if one fails the other is likely to fail, too.

Even if each risk is a good one to make separately, it isn’t always good to make both risks.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#258

Post by frankus »

0x00000000 wrote: post #233
kstrauser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of house had you been dreaming of? I live in SF, and even here $3M goes an awfully freaking long way.

anything within 45 minutes of your office in palo alto (where you are mandated to show up 5 days a week). this will get you a 1300sqft piece of shit built in 1964 with asbestos and lead paint and lead pipes and a cracked foundation (also some dipshit realtor had them paint all the original wood beams and paneling inside gloss white and replace the original wood and slate floors with grey vinyl) from some baby boomer…

Every now and then I dream about how much more money I'd be making if I lived in the Bay Area, but then I read something like this and realize that earning ~half as much working remotely from a cheaper (at least when I bought) city maybe isn't so bad.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#259

Post by seattle_spring »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #247
kstrauser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of house had you been dreaming of? I live in SF, and even here $3M goes an awfully freaking long way.

for a standalone house in my area (lakeside near Zurich, Switzerland) you'd pay way more than 3M... apartments go for 2+.

Couldn't you just not live "lakeside"?

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#260

Post by _jab »

The details here remain unclear to me, and even this tweet is somewhat vague.

> I was given an offer that would explode same day. I had to forfeit all of my vested shares earned over my 3.5+ years at Windsurf. I was ultimately given a payout of only 1% of what my shares would have been worth at the time of the deal.

Was forfeiting the vested shares conditional on accepting the offer, or did he have no choice over the matter? Was the payout what he was offered as part of accepting the deal, or was that his consolation for not accepting it? The wording is genuinely unclear to me.

I literally see 3 interpretations here:

1. Offer was to forfeit shares in exchange for 1% payout, but OP rejected and still has shares

2. Offer was to forfeit shares in exchange for undisclosed payout, but OP rejected and got 1% payout instead and still has shares

3. He had to forfeit shares regardless of accepting offer, got 1% payout

(1) and (3) are both shitty offers from Google, but (2) is reasonable. Exploding offers are not uncommon in tech acquisitions. My guess is that (2) is what happened, since that's not in contradiction with prior reporting.

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