Comment by codyrobbins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codyrobbins | Hacker News Reader

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Disclaimer: Only having read the WSJ article and knowing nothing more, I think it’s more or less a form of blackmail—the employees are unfairly being put in a no-win situation.

That being said, my takeaway was that they had thrown around equity so liberally that they’ve exhausted their employee options pool and it’s going to interfere with their ability to recruit going forward. Is that the wrong interpretation?

If it’s not, and given such a situation, do you think it’s fair to say that a startup should generally be trying to allocate its options carefully such that a chef doesn’t end up with $20M worth of equity?

  >> That being said, my takeaway was that they had thrown around equity so liberally that they’ve exhausted their employee options pool and it’s going to interfere with their ability to recruit going forward.

They can issue more stock to incentivize new employees, which is fair in that it dilutes everyone equally (preferred and common together).

What is unfair is to assume that the preferred stock allocation must be a constant, and that you have to claw back existing stock options in order to pass on stock in the existing options pool to new employees.

Given that most equity is worth nothing in the end I don't think you're correct. The beautiful thing about equity is that its future value can not be determined and it's not possible to limit the upside fairly. If employers start putting a cap on the upside, it undermines the shoot-for-the-moon lets make this a $100 billion dollar company spirit that equity otherwise engenders. Had Google had a $1B exit, or a $100M exit - both far more likely scenarios when the chef joined - the grant would have seemed perfectly reason.

This has nothing to do with risk and all to do with incentive. Whether your grant is on top of a full salary or not is irrelevant.

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