So if one was to start a company today and wanted to enshrine employee-and-founder-friendly terms in their company, how should things be structured? Make the founders' shares be of the same class as the employees? Something special?
Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
351–360 of 553 posts
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But it’s quite relevant to the question of whether you can just assume that some country will foot the bill for your health care needs at old age, and therefore you don’t need to worry about health expenses if you retire early. Rising costs of health care systems are a serious problem in most developed countries. “Eh, I’ll just move to Europe in old age” is not really a comprehensive plan to ensure you get good healthcare far in the future.
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 of…
Looking at that table you shared, it seems the US spends about 50% higher (17.2% vs 12.3% and less) than any other country on that list. And it still has extreme problems for anyone with an illness more serious than (say) a cold.
You’re misunderstanding what the issues with US healthcare are.
I’ve had significant medical issues in the US and received truly excellent care without significant out of pocket costs, the same is true for many of my friends and family. There’s a reason there’s significant medical tourism to the US and from the US. However on population wide measures like life expectancy you’re better off providing basic care for 100% of the population than world class care for 40%.
There’s also major underlying issues like decades of obesity and ignorance around ‘alternative medicine’, vaccines, etc.
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#355Earlier 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.
Can confirm from my experience. Although not everyone is like this. Sent me into burnout that I didn't wanna be a dick and extract as much "value" from the employees by walking over them and fucking them over when the chance arises. It's always empty promises to string people along. From my experience, these people (the resource extraction dicks) are also some of the must unlikable and unhappy people I've ever met.
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
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You pay for health insurance in every single county, either directly or through higher taxes.
In the United States in particular, though, you pay twice - once for the healthcare, a second time for all the bloat and waste that comes with it.
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - equity should be an incentive to contribute the the company's success, and partial compensation for the risk of going to a startup. One should value it at precisely $0 in terms of life planning. This becomes truer and truer the more of an employee and the less agency over the company's choices you have, but generally if you're not a co-founder (founding engineer doesn't count) equity traded off against salary i…
> equity should be an incentive [...] and partial compensation for [...] One should value it at precisely $0 in terms of life planning.* Not very good incentive or compensation, if you have to value it at $0.
Still better than a lottery ticket.
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. Likewise with non-guaranteed bonuses (gotta love the "plus a discretionary bonus!" commentary during offer discussions). It's always worth offering to take equity as long as they agree in writing to not ever dilute your shares and vest them immediately. However, it's unlikely that any company will agree. It's best to imagine compensation as exactly one's salary. Then (virtually) all surprises are good.
> It's always worth offering to take equity as long as they agree in writing to not ever dilute your shares and vest them immediately. However, it's unlikely that any company will agree. Well, yes, because that’s insane.
And yet they agree to pay salary immediately.
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
You pay for health insurance in every single county, either directly or through higher taxes.
In the United States in particular, though, you pay twice - once for the healthcare, a second time for all the bloat and waste that comes with it.
1/3 of US medical spending could be avoided by moving to an efficient single payer system.
But, a lost of ‘waste’ is diminishing returns where there’s some benefit to the procedures preformed. It’s easy to say paying 1 million for an extra week is a poor investment, until it’s you making that decision for a loved one.
Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
#360Holy shit. We need need better early phase governance tools than handshakes and winks. The SAFE was written to streamline things so that everyone can get to work right now with a reasonable basis of trust. How can we have that basis of trust among founders and early hires when stuff like this happens?
If no founders can be trusted, sweat equity partnerships will become rare. If the only people who can build companies are VC funded founders who hire employees who treat the whole thing like a game, there will not be a good crop of companies to come out of that environment.
Founding is freaking hard. It needs to be reliably and fairly rewarded. Otherwise the people trying to bootstrap and make things happen have nowhere to go if the idea they are completely convinced MUST be built is also a hard hard sell to VC hive minds... because it's too oddly shaped (innovative).
We all have an interest to put the instruments and paperwork into place to make stories like this NOT happen so that sweat equity startups founded on personal convictions and strong cooperative incentive alignment will happen.