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Comment by allyt | Hacker News Reader

The founder (or any employer) has a responsibility to shareholders to pay employees as little as possible. An employee has responsibility to themselves (and their family) to ask for as much pay as possible. Negotiation is about finding a middle ground between those interests. Holding an employer responsible for figuring out what a given employee will be happy with is strange, to say the least.

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> The founder (or any employer) has a responsibility to shareholders to pay employees as little as possible.

that's why there is equity compensation - something that Garmin didn't provide adequately

that's why there is equity compensation

And as little equity as possible, for identical reasons.

An employee is responsible for making sure the terms agreed on are ones they're happy with, not an employer. An employer has a legal obligation to shareholders to minimize the costs of her business, one in direct conflict with "being generous in compensation" to her employees.

Although in this case we have an engineer who was all three of employer, shareholder and employee....

And you're wrong about "minimize costs" per se. The employer has a obligation to maximize shareholder returns, for which a simplistic application of the "minimize costs" principle is seldom a solution.

Right - you don't maximize shareholder returns by being generous with handing out stock. IMHO, being generous handing out stock is just stupid.

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