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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

#301

Post by xvector »

karmasimida wrote: post #171
highfrequency wrote: post #124

Directly contradicts Garry Tan's post saying that all forty founding engineers got seven figure payouts from the Google acquisition: https://x.com/garrytan/status/1947072583092052406 Even if the OP considers the full headline number of $2.4b to be the value of the company, and taking his "1% of fair" number as truth, seven figure payouts would imply all 40 founding engineers had >4% equity which is nonsensical.

Not contracting. Let’s do a simple math. Assume this employee gets 5% of the company (which is super unlikely, but let’s go with it), that is 150m for what could be worth if OpenAI deal went through. 1% of that would be 1.5m. That is still 7 figure. But this person spent 3 years in a startup, which turned out to be a unicorn and super highly successful, and he bagged a FAANG salary man pay at the end of the deal. Bas…

It's bizarre to see tech bros, YC, and megacorporations kill the startup talent pipeline that they rely on so much.

Who is gonna want to work at a startup in a non-founder role after this and Scale AI?

This continuing degradation of, and flagrant disregard for social norms is destructive for society.

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

#302

Post by socalgal2 »

stouset wrote: post #277
nimos wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a tenancy in common 2 bedroom apartment not a house. Shared ownership of a 100+ year old building with "leased" parking 2 blocks away. Not exactly the home ownership dream.

I own one unit in a 2-unit condo built in the 1910s in SF. It’s pretty fucking dreamy if you ask me.

different strokes for different folks. I can't fucking stand hearing every breath of every neighbor in a 100yr old SF house and having to tiptoe at all times so as not to upset the other tenents

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

#303

Post by busterarm »

drmath wrote: post #181
gsibble wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to ask dozens of companies that wanted to hire me just for how many shares were outstanding and/or authorized. They almost always refused to share. You can almost never get any info on equity until it's too late and you realize it's worth nothing.

> I've tried to ask dozens of companies that wanted to hire me just for how many shares were outstanding and/or authorized. "Wanted to hire me" as in they made an offer, or an earlier step? At offer stage, I've never had a company refuse to answer these questions. I don't have "dozens of companies" worth of experience though, maybe one dozen if that.

Every time I hear this I think experiences and expectations are vastly different between SV and the rest of the country. 30ish years of working in New York and I haven't encountered a single company that isn't 100% opaque about their equity to employees until time of exit/IPO. And I keep a large network.

That said, everyone here treats equity of non-public companies as if it's toilet paper. Some of my coworkers got very lucky and very rich when our company went public, but that was also a long time ago now.

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

#304

Post by xvector »

pembrook wrote: post #190
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…

Okay, but how much do you think you deserve as an employee who has invested none of your money in the company and decided to join on a 6-figure salary only after the company is already through YC, is funded by top investors and looks attractive? If you’re instantly replaceable by any dime-a-dozen engineer than can install packages on npm and use react components and add a thumbs up to slack messages…to not get accide…

> I just fail to see why everyone in the comments here believes they deserve to be compensated at the level of the top 0.01% of all people without starting their own business.

No one is saying this.

There is no question that the Windsurf and Scale AI ploys effectively left employees with ownership in the company high and dry.

> but how much do you think you deserve as an employee

You deserve what you are promised. If a founder says you will get rich if the company goes to the moon, and they instead do some strange maneuver so only they cash out, the founder is a scumbag.

You are acting like early startup employees risk nothing working for a startup, and invest nothing of their own. Again, that is a weird assumption.

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

#305

Post by xvector »

skybrian wrote: post #80

When people give you a percentage (1%), that is a ratio and they are not telling you either number. So, that makes me a little suspicious. I wonder how much he got in the end?

It doesn't really matter if he got less than what the acquihired founders did proportionately to his percentage.

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

#306

Post by klooney »

marssaxman wrote: post #45
klooney wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base salaries aren't terrible at startups, it's the RSUs and ESPP they can't match. I can deal with a terrible IT department preventing progress for double the money, it's fine.

I really cannot, so - good for you! It takes all kinds. There is nothing I could do for pleasure, even with double my salary, which would compensate for the misery I would feel working a job I hated. But that's who I am, and we're not all the same!

It's not a terrible job that I hate, it's just sometimes you want to do something and you can't without a weird lobbying process.

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

#307

Post by all2 »

chasebank wrote: post #281
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.

I'm in Santa Barbara, CA. Good friend of mine just bought a shithole 3-2 1300sqft for $2.2m. $3M doesn't go very far considering 30 years ago it was retirement status almost anywhere.

I could retire on 3 million right now.

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

#308

Post by xvector »

whiplash451 wrote: post #98

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

At least you get paid in bigco and you don't have to worry about your equity being snatched from under you.

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

#309

Post by bigmattystyles »

socalgal2 wrote: post #299
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.

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

$3m mortgage as well

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

#310

Post by all2 »

kortilla wrote: post #294
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do a minimum of 2 hours a day. I think people in this particular conversation might be just a little divorced from reality.
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