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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

#481

Post by busterarm »

School-Cotton wrote: post #316
busterarm wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

I worked at one for five years: Materialize. Based in NYC. Everyone knew how many shares they owned, what percentage of the total equity that represented, and what the rights of the preferred share classes were.

Glad to see this data point. This is a company founded relatively recently and I hope this means that some kind of change is happening regionally.

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

#482

Post by stouset »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #480
stouset wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once again we’re talking about employee #2, exercising early would not have been that expensive! Exercising early almost certainly would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. For employee #2 of a startup, you’re almost certainly already working for mostly equity and not salary. You are high as a kite if you think it’s reasonable to dump large sums of money into a five-person company while getting paid peanuts…

Without details we’ll just have to agree to disagree, but exercising options is not an all-or-nothing affair and can be done with a budget in mind.

A -EV investment like early-stage startup equity is still -EV for every incremental dollar spent. Paying upfront for equity whose terms can be rewritten out from under you with zero input is not smart from any angle.

You’re basically criticizing the guy for not having perfect foresight, when the real issue is that startup equity is trivially manipulable by upper-level management. It’s a carrot they can dangle in front of people while only rarely having to pay even a fraction of what was promised in the rare event of a profitable exit.

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

#483

Post by Dylan16807 »

highfrequency wrote: post #451
karmasimida wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, but 40 people cannot each have 5% of the company.

Nobody said all 40 of those engineers got 1% of fair.

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

#484

Post by Dylan16807 »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #396

Title should be changed. Sounds like this was a choice not a fuckover. That said... Don't be a fool for all these AI startups that want you to burn out on 100 hour weeks. Many YC and non-YC startups are using this bravado based hiring strategy trying to get cheap labour to fuel their rockets to the moon. Don't be no fool!

The value of the options was destroyed in the deal. He had a choice between getting 1% or getting nothing.

It was a fuckover.

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

#485

Post by kortilla »

all2 wrote: post #310
kortilla wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So? My point is that’s a miserable life to put up with when you can afford a $3 million dollar home.

8% of your waking life going to and from work without getting paid for it is dumb

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

#487

Post by yibg »

baq wrote: post #358
tyre wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No one pays 4 years of salary immediately.

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

#488

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#489

Post by sudosysgen »

Retric wrote: post #359
vkou wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Paying 1m/week is objectively a waste when you're refusing to pay 100k for a year, though. Healthcare is paid through insurance, so there's real meat to the loved one distinction - you're not actually making that decision for your loved ones in 99.9% of cases even in the US.

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

#490

Post by paradox460 »

0x00000000 wrote: post #233
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.

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…

I don't think of it this way often, but damn am I glad I left the bay area
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