Name and Shame: LoanStreet (NY) cheated me out of equity | Hacker News Reader

Name and Shame: LoanStreet (NY) cheated me out of equity

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75 pointsIMAYousaf8 comments

protip: although the board likely had to meet to approve their options contract, the board can also do anything such as backdate the vesting period or quantity or strike price or set a more favorable vesting schedule

and simply didn't, it was never a factor as the board didn’t meet on the matter of actually granting them the options at all

> If I ask a hundred people on the street if they’d clean my house in return for getting $1000 in a year, the vast majority will expect to receive it one year after doing the job. Some might expect a year after that conversation. Few or none will expect that they will receive it one year after a future event that I don’t tell them about. LoanStreet either intentionally deceived me or accidentally deceived me but have since refused to make it right by fulfilling what a reasonable person would consider to be the promise they made me.

I feel bad for this guy, but he definitely should have got it in writing before joining. But I guess if he had pushed for it he might not have got an offer.

I think if you actually asked a hundred people on the street if they'd clean a house in return for $1000 in a year, they'd have the street smarts to smell a rat, wonder why you can't pay once the cleaning is complete, why it would be any different after a year, and run away as fast as they can.

I'm not sure why developers can't follow the same line of reasoning.

This is why it's really important to go over your offer letter in detail and potentially even use some legal counsel. Besides companies being straight up malicious, there's a ton of ways companies can simply produce typos in the official offer letters. It's worth triple making sure the details are correct.

We try to help with this wherever possible through our negotiation service at https://levels.fyi/services/. You'll be surprised how many times a recruiter might've misheard something on a phone call and it transfers over to your contract with the company.

Also, if you're in a union, this is one of the big things that they help out with.

Quick question for you: does your negotiation service help deal with raises/promotions at an existing job? I could use some help with for next year. P.S. Kudos on the site, it definitely opened my eyes two years ago when I was looking to move to a larger company.

Appreciate it! Unfortunately, we currently only help with new hire offers right now. However, some helpful things to do would be to have consistent 1:1s with your manager especially leading up to your performance cycle. Writing down projects and details of your contributions proves super useful in these meetings where you want to highlight your own work over the past quarter / year.

That said, frankly internal promotion / negotiating is a bit tougher than a new job offer given it focuses mainly on merit based on your past work (vs potential outlook as a prospective employee). It can also really vary depending on a company's compensation philosophy (which you should absolutely ask about when joining a new job).

Sadly, the only person who will end up suffering as a result of this rant (whether it's true or not) will be the original poster.

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