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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

#291

Post by bjackman »

mawadev wrote: post #71

I'm waking up personally to the unethical side of Software development as well. You can either do little and get paid pocket change or you can provide a ton of value for pocket change next to some promises lulling you in, where the value of your work exponentially increases, but you will see nothing of it and whatever you do: you are still a replaceable cell in excel to them and there will be ways where you get dragg…

As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are:

1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work.

2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open source and has some value/community outside of your employer.

3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5 years of your career.

If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely misdirecting your energy.

(I guess there are also cases where the mission of your organisation is not profit and you care about that. I don't know any engineers in this position but I might be quite happy working in the public sector).

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

#292

Post by [deleted] »

KaiserPro wrote: post #60

I was aquihired by a FAANG. The headline "startup bought for x million" is almost always a lie, either direct or by omission. First, when a startup is bought, its generally not bought at the headline rate. So if you see a "bought for $45m" that doesn't mean People who own shares all got a % of 45m. That number is normally bullshit, but also a "total package" which include share offers for joining the new company. Thi…

[deleted]

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

#293

Post by golergka »

chollida1 wrote: post #210
para_parolu wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$25k/yr can be decent living in some places.

Sure but not in North America, where i assume most readers of this site are from.

Just out of pedantry, all of Mexico is in North America.

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

#294

Post by kortilla »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #288
0x00000000 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you the kind of person who refuses to go to the east bay or live next to middle class Asian Americans or Latinos? Because there are plenty of nice places for 3m 45 minutes from Palo Alto. Arguably you could get a house on the south side of the city and be 45 minutes from downtown PA by car or Caltrain.

Pitching a 45 minute commute as as something as acceptable for $3 million is insane. It has nothing to do with class. That’s a shit life driving that every day.

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

#295

Post by BobaFloutist »

anonym29 wrote: post #282
kstrauser wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are greatly exaggerating. One tangible advantage to living somewhere expensive with higher salaries is that anything you can buy online is effectively that much cheaper. An iPhone costs the same in Arkansas as in San Jose, so you'd end up working many more hours to buy one in AR than in CA, on average. Yes, housing is more expensive. A lot more. Everything else is way cheaper.

The trick is to rent cheap and live like a college student in SF/bay area while young, save aggressively, invest intelligently, then move somewhere comfortable but more affordable (CO's front range is lovely) for your 30s/40s.

Just watch you don't get overly acclimated to the weather, or you'll end up with a single-digit number of cities in the world you find comfortable

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

#296

Post by jjice »

stan_kirdey wrote: post #75

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 had some RSUs from a previous company (likely will not be worth anything) and some options at another, but I have no idea how to understand how dilution like this works. My understanding is surface level of that scene in The Social Network.

I feel like I understand _what_ an RSU is and what options are, but are there any good resources for me to learn from?

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

#297

Post by BobaFloutist »

supportengineer wrote: post #253
anukin wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

$3m is a pretty decent down payment for that.

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

#298

Post by stouset »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #167
stouset wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you to put yourself in that person's shoes. It is never a simple decision. Yes, there is plenty of opportunity to exercise when valuations were low. But that also means you're buying before there's clear evidence that the company will be successful. It also still means you're out the cash to exercise the options before there's a market for those options and before you know that the company will actually g…

I'm speaking from experience. Yes, it means buying in before there's clear evidence of success, that's the risk! The lower the risk the lower the reward. Waiting until the company is worth billions of dollars before buying its stock is one of several options available, and each has its own risk/reward profile.

My point is that exercising the company’s stock early is fraught with risk and is in almost all cases a -EV play.

Yes, the option technically exists. But without perfect foresight it’s not a good option. It’s not even an okay one. It’s an exceedingly bad one in most cases.

Acting like this employee was silly for not dumping a huge sum of money into company shares before it was in a position to succeed is flatly ridiculous.

Stock options are—as they currently stand—a lottery ticket that startups dangle in front of people’s faces that allow candidates to believe they will get fairly compensated for their labor, but with so much wiggle room that the company rarely has to ever make good on it. And I also say this from personal experience as employee. I was an employee ~#600 of a unicorn that went public. I ended up in something of the sweet spot of equity: most of the people who joined before me left before me and got less than I did in the end. Most people who joined after me got less equity at a worse strike price than I did.

I did pretty good. And this was a rare raging success story. Most people did worse than me.

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

#299

Post by socalgal2 »

kstrauser wrote: post #225
supportengineer wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fun part comes when you put in 20 years doing this, and your dream is to buy a nice house, and you finally get your seven-figure payout, and.... it's not enough to buy a house. Because now a house is 3 million dollars.

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

$3m cash will get you a house that you have to still pay $60k-$100k a year to stay in property tax and maintanence

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

#300

Post by marssaxman »

roncesvalles wrote: post #214
fusslo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my equity from 2years pre-acquisition: ~$2800. Then the CEO gave out bonuses when everyone threatened to quit. Then after his 3 month vacation to Italy, he came back driving his new Ferrari. My equity from 4 years ( employee ~60, grew to over 500 ): worthless. No one is able to exercise any options. They also readjusted when the valuation came below the total raised, making the value of my vested shares ~$13k ( down…

I know this is HN but imo it's rarely ever a good deal to work at startups as an employee instead of a cofounder (with actual cofounder equity not just the title i.e. within the same order of magnitude as the largest-shareholding cofounder), over a bigger established company. The only good reasons to do so are if you want to learn or make contacts so that you can found your own startup later. In my pensive moments, o…

The other good reason is that you might enjoy the experience more than you would enjoy the stultifying, oppressive, slow-moving environment of a big corporation. That's why I keep doing it: I'm not expecting to get rich, I'm just trying to live a good life, and it's proven to be much easier for me to do that when I work for a startup.

I value startup equity at ~$0, but if the salary is enough to live comfortably, that's fine.

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