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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

#321

Post by tlogan »

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…

This is a brilliant move by Google: it makes joining any AI startup even less appealing.

Stock options were always a lottery. But this takes the shenanigans to a whole new level.

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

#322

Post by justinclift »

Retric wrote: post #319
justinclift wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You pay for health insurance in every single county, either directly or through higher taxes.

Yep. And it's about 2% of my tax, which isn't noticable.

Unlike getting anything more serious than a cold in an idiotic, backward country without public health care.

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

#323

Post by 0x00000000 »

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.

i live in RWC

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

#324

Post by igor47 »

kentonv wrote: post #99
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…

Yeah, I used to hear all the time that "a startup is worth $1 million per engineer in a pure acquihire", but learned the hard way this is a myth. When we were talking to various companies about acquiring Sandstorm.io (my startup) in 2017, one of the companies told me, essentially: "We aren't interested in your IP, only the employees. We'll give you a set of job offers for them. We will then sum up the salary and equi…

That sucks. FWIW I had a sandstorm instance back in the day, and I think it was an idea ahead of it's time. The stuff you were trying to do I think got easier as containers became more widely adopted, and as enshittification has made the case for self-hosting more obvious. So... Thanks for trying!

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

#325

Post by pinewurst »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #41
marssaxman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there ever a time when you could reasonably expect to make more money by joining a startup? That has never been the case so far as I am aware, and I'm currently on my seventh tour through startup-land...

It was always a bad deal. It was supported by urban legends of janitors and cafeteria workers getting seven-figure payouts because they negotiated a few shares of a company that went IPO and went "unicorn". But the reality was, most startup companies failed, and most shares became worthless. In 1995, 2005, 2015, etc. it was the same story. The only thing that changed recently is the "unicorns" stopped happening altog…

The startup I did in the 90s provided me enough money to buy a car when they IPOed. Feh! Not worth the dreams I still have about having to return to working there.

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

#326

Post by igor47 »

HNdev1995 wrote: post #222
dom96 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you don't retire in a country with private healthcare

My parents live in the UK which has free healthcare. The situation is dire. The waitlist for chronic pain surgeries are 3-4 years long. Lots of people, including my parents, have resorted to flying out to other cheaper countries to get treatment.

Is chronic pain an outlier here, or representative of wider trends? My uninformed prior is that surgery is not a good approach for chronic pain, and that the NHS is more likely to cover surgeries with a more clear-cut cost/benefit ratio

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

#327

Post by jamil7 »

HNdev1995 wrote: post #222
dom96 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you don't retire in a country with private healthcare

My parents live in the UK which has free healthcare. The situation is dire. The waitlist for chronic pain surgeries are 3-4 years long. Lots of people, including my parents, have resorted to flying out to other cheaper countries to get treatment.

Because politicians have made it their mission to chip away at the NHS over decades. This doesn’t say anything about the efficacy of statutory healthcare.

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

#328

Post by K0balt »

justinclift wrote: post #313
Retric wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3% of 3 million is 90k which sounds better than it actually is as you need to pay for health insurance. Plenty of people live in any city with less than that, but it is below the average income in many nice counties in the US.

[flagged]

This. I moved in a developing nation with a GDP smaller than most US states. I have access to excellent modern healthcare and facilities, get more than 5 minutes in front of my doctor, often 1/2 hour+, and my (nearly 60 years old) health insurance is less than 75 usd a month. Covers 90 percent plus, including mental health, limited dental, and optical. The healthcare sector is private / public hybrid, profitable, and growing. Hands down better in every way than the US state I left.

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

#329

Post by anon191928 »

notimetorelax wrote: post #311
xvector wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Young engineers who don’t know how this works yet.

I will make them this then. I will inform new talent about how VC lies with puting all proof too. New website and SM coming for this

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

#330

Post by Retric »

justinclift wrote: post #322
Retric wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay for health insurance in every single county, either directly or through higher taxes.

Yep. And it's about 2% of my tax, which isn't noticable. Unlike getting anything more serious than a cold in an idiotic, backward country without public health care.

US is an outlier by spending 17% of GDP on healthcare requiring high insurance costs by 9-12% is common in most developed countries requiring not 2% of your taxes by ~10% of your income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_spending_as_percent_of_...

Even in China you’re looking at 6% of income. Of course taxes aren’t evenly distributed, but 90k means enough income to be worth taxing without the political power to offload the tax burden on others.

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