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Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

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Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#431

Post by hef19898 »

garmaine wrote: post #416
hef19898 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back to the start-up? Or just combine the RSUs with a cash bonus large enough to cover the taxes? Both solutions would work.

Both solutions would require the company to have a prohibitive amount of their investment money set aside to cover the tax costs to employees of vested options. That both has perverse incentives and is a very substantial innovation tax—making investments in startups even more risky, and raising funds more difficult (since doing so at an increasing valuation also increases the capital requirements needed to cover the…

We talk about companies awash in VC money. This whole tax discussion looks a lot like helping VC more than actual employees. Or like finding excuses and scape goats why these companies aren't doing such things right now.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#432

Post by ric2b »

tikhonj wrote: post #89
baby wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time how can smaller companies compete with large companies if they can’t match salaries?

When you can't compete on salary, you can compete on other axes. Not just financially (equity/etc), but also: - flexible schedules - autonomy + impact - interesting work - culture (respect, appreciation... etc) It's not hard for me to imagine an environment where I'd love to work despite giving up a lot of salary. Hell, I'm not unique—just look at how many incredibly skilled people choose research careers over far mo…

Don't forget equity. That's probably where startups have the biggest advantage over large corps.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#433

Post by ric2b »

kirillzubovsky wrote: post #400
baby wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time how can smaller companies compete with large companies if they can’t match salaries?

Honestly, for certain jobs, you would be almost crazy not to work at a big company right now. FB/Google at el can offer salaries that are multiple-x of those at startup. If money is what you are after, it just makes a lot of sense to work there and squirrel away the cash. In fact, there are probably only two things that startups can offer that big companies cannot: (1) A product that when successful it will change ev…

Equity.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#434

Post by watwut »

nkoren wrote: post #410
watwut wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik, the old civilizations were rather rudimentary in perspective? There are some traces of it, but no mind bending anything.

Roman artists used vanishing point perspective, which to medieval artists -- who had no grasp of perspective at all -- was pretty amazing. What the Romans didn't do was use vanishing points systematically -- they would have multiple contradictory vanishing points in a single image. Brunelleschi's invention of 3-point perspective was much more systematic than what the ancient world had done, but it was very much inspi…

Roman artists use of perspective is not really level that would be "mind blowing". Once in a while you got there little bit of it.

Medieval artists knew things far away are smaller, they did not knew all paralel lines have to go to one one point. But 3-point perspective is just another formal choice, simplification.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#435

Post by emteycz »

hef19898 wrote: post #431
garmaine wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both solutions would require the company to have a prohibitive amount of their investment money set aside to cover the tax costs to employees of vested options. That both has perverse incentives and is a very substantial innovation tax—making investments in startups even more risky, and raising funds more difficult (since doing so at an increasing valuation also increases the capital requirements needed to cover the…

We talk about companies awash in VC money. This whole tax discussion looks a lot like helping VC more than actual employees. Or like finding excuses and scape goats why these companies aren't doing such things right now.

There is nothing like 'companies awash in VC money' in Europe. The investments here are laughable compared to US, or China, and the products are mostly not really innovative, because of the risk, as discussed here.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#437

Post by jashmatthews »

garmaine wrote: post #319
hef19898 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSUs are working just fine. I got them from Amazon, I was able to get largely discounted shares from EADS back the day. Tax wise Amazon RSUs were treated like part of my salary, covering taxes when they vested ranged from selling all and selling parts of the RSU or covering taxes cash and keeping all of the RSUs. The discount at EADS was treated as part of my salary. No problem whatsoever. INAL, but all these instnce…

I’m talking about startups, not big public companies. That approach doesn’t work so well when the startup shares are illiquid and no market exists to sell them at vesting or tax time. In the USA this isn’t an issue because you can make an 83(b) election with our tax authority which basically means “I elect to pay taxes when I sell, rather than at vesting.” So as your illiquid startup shares vest and you accumulate pa…

Advice I had via work and my Steuerberater is that options are taxable on excise rather vesting. What you can't do is early excise while also deferring the tax until sale.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#438

Post by jashmatthews »

garmaine wrote: post #394
hef19898 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which doesn't prevent companies from issuing them, does it? Obviously, I'm no tax expert. I did hear of enough instances where people in the US owed taxes for basically worthless shares here on HN. And in case you assume the shares are going to be worthless, just sell to cover taxes when they vest. No harm to your bottom line. And a potential upside.

Yes, because both you the employee and the company have to make active steps to structure the equity grants in a very specific way to get the favorable tax treatment, and if you screw up or skip a step you can get hit with an unexpected tax bill. But there IS a process. AFAIK there is no such thing in many European jurisdictions, like Germany. > And in case you assume the shares are going to be worthless, just sell t…

> Yes, because both you the employee and the company have to make active steps to structure the equity grants in a very specific way to get the favorable tax treatment, and if you screw up or skip a step you can get hit with an unexpected tax bill.

Not offering options because you're employees have to pay income tax on all the value rather than capital gains tax on most of the value is ridiculous.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#439

Post by justatdotin »

secondcoming wrote: post #358
rcpt wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisbon maybe getting there

I think Lisbon was on the radar a few years ago, but I get the impression it may have blown it. According to folk I know who were looking at it, they had issues with the 'work ethic' of locals (read into that what you will) and high tax.

what I read is when worker's lives arent threatened (by deprivation of health care) we make sensible decisions about balancing a commitment to an employer with our commitments to family and community.

Re: Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]

#440

Post by garbagetime »

jlokier wrote: post #243
garbagetime wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European Union is a political and economic union. Europe is a continent. It seems strange to refer to wanting to leave the European Union as wanting to leave Europe. Of course, I'm sure those who support the European Union are generally also very much in favour of it being treated as synonymous with Europe. But it sounds like nothing short of absurd rhetoric to me.

"Europe" is how it's often described in the UK. There's a long history of using "Europe" in news or political writing to refer to the continent (excluding the UK), and also to the various political and administrative entities such as the European Union, EEC, EC, ECHR, ECJ, etc. Also referring to "Europeans" as people in those countries. Much as, say, "China" is use to refer to the political entity that is the Chinese…

Only 27 out of 44 countries in Europe are part of the union. Governmentally speaking, Europe and the EU are not at all synonymous.

>Much as, say, "China" is use to refer to the political entity that is the Chinese government rather than the geopgraphy,

That's not at all a fair comparison. China is country, not a continent, and thus is pretty much defined as being the area under control of the PRC (and other Chinese regimes). Europe, being a continent, remains (in all relevant senses) constant in size, regardless of what happens to the European Union.

>and "America" is used to refer to the USA government, not the continent.

That's absurd rhetoric, too. I don't refer to the USA as America (well, sometimes I do, but I try not to). Besides, it would be strange to talk about California leaving America. One would say California left the USA.

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