Comment by geophile | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geophile | Hacker News Reader

My story, along similar lines: Microsoft was recruiting me for two years, starting in 1994, while at my first startup. I kept saying no. I left the startup to work, by myself, on an early ORM for Java, (back in JDK 1.0.2 days).

Microsoft approached me again, offered to buy my technology for a close to $1M, give me lots of equity (back when that stock was growing quickly), and roll out my product, (this was before Microsoft dumped Java). I would then go to work on what they wanted me for originally.

A couple of trips later, I just didn't like Microsoft, and started searching for alternatives. I found a little Boston-based startup who needed my product, and who I liked a lot. (Actually, the guy who put me on the trail of this startup had just gotten his company acquired by Microsoft.)

I got drunk, called the VP putting the offer together, and said thanks but no thanks. He said I'd be sorry.

I wasn't. I didn't make nearly as much as if I had gone to Microsoft, but I built and shipped my product, stayed on that product, worked with Java (which I liked) instead of the MS platform (which I didn't), learned a lot, had lots of fun with it, and saw the equity turn tangible. Couldn't have asked for a better outcome.

The thing you were building was worth more than one million dollars to you? It's good that you're pleased with the outcome, but the notion just seems really bizarre to me to give up one million dollars just to keep working on one programming project on my own. Maybe there's something about it I'm just not "getting".

have you considered money isn't everything?

Yes, but one million dollars just seems like a huge sum to give up for one project to me. I'm not saying they made the wrong choice, it's just one I can't see myself making. $1M is a decade of $100k a year. Money might not be /everything/ but that's a pretty comfortable life while you work on other projects or hold another job with no fear of running into serious financial problems as long as you don't do something ridiculous.

I feel the same way with the majority of these "I turned down their offer" stories. I admire them, but $1M (even across 4 years), to me is a lot of money. Enough to fund a new project and then maybe I'd think about turning down future potential buyouts having the financial stability.

It's classic cognitive dissonance - they realize they made the wrong choice, so expend energy and time justifying it and explaining how they made the right choice every chance they get, as though eventually they will convince themselves. And they probably will, in time.

Sorry, but no. It was the wrong choice financially, but the right choice for my emotional well-being. I also reasoned about regrets years down the road -- I'd probably regret not having tried my own thing.

And I don't explain this "every chance [I] get". I think about it rarely, and discuss it even less. I've done well enough financially that giving up the Microsoft cash just doesn't matter. I just mention it here because it seemed relevant to the topic at hand.

I find this reply entirely convincing. Thanks for sharing your experience—it's obviously relevant to the topic at hand.

Nice comment.

You really don't know if you made "the right choice" for your emotional well-being because you can only see one of any number of possible outcomes.

If you'd have gone with Big Bad Microsoft, a lot of things could have happened. At the instant of deciding - you could have learned how to make decisions based less on emotions and more on logic. You could have helped change the company culture instead of being relatively ineffectual. I wonder - what has your hate-based (I assume) decision really changed for anybody outside of a small Boston startup?

> You really don't know if you made "the right choice" for your emotional well-being because you can only see one of any number of possible outcomes.

The technology for that is not available yet.

It's interesting to speculate what would happen if everyone had perfect knowledge of the ultimate outcome of every decision and optimized them for their own goals. It would be a completely different world.

Wow, that's a harsh comment.

Being neither Vulcan nor omniscient, just human, I had to make a decision with imperfect information, and my instincts did play a role in that decision. Improving Microsoft corporate culture was not my goal. Improving the world was not my goal. My goal was to work on software that I was driven to write, using technology that I enjoyed using, and to provide a comfortable life for my family. I did all of those things.

I don't "hate" Microsoft, but combining what I knew of myself at the time, with what I observed at the company, I concluded that I would be happier elsewhere.

It's phenomenal how some people believe they know what is and was best for everyone else based on their own assumptions. He made a decision you wouldn't have, under conditions you weren't in based on priorities you clearly don't agree with and having had different experiences than you, but hey, because he didn't take the money, he's wrong.

I used to think this way, and that saddens me... I hope you get over it, too, and realize that other people want and do different things, and not only are they rarely categorically wrong or right, even if you consider them as such, that is your opinion, and it's no more valid or invalid than someone who does something of which you do not approve and comes away from it satisfied.

Spending 5 years of your life at a place you are unlikely to enjoy for $1m (before taxes) doesn't seem like that great a deal to me.

A big chunk of that $1m will be gone to taxes, as someone in another comment has already mentioned.

Also the taxes at the time were much higher; so the impressive $1m starts to look much less impressive when you add in the fact that it probably vested over a very long term and that he was going to be put to work on something he didn't like for a long time.

A few things to consider:

1) The $1MM will most likely vest over 2~4 years.

2) You will lose 40-50% of the money to taxes depending on your exact situation.

3) This was the Clinton years where taxes were higher than they are today.

Hummm I thought capital gains were taxed lower

And yes, I could take the money, wait a couple of years (after all it's MS, you can usually go for something that interests you better)

Capital gains are taxed lower, but depending on the structure of the arrangement, it might all count as short-term capital gains, i.e. - income.

I was confident of a good outcome either way. Microsoft was a safe bet, but for the startup, I was foolishly optimistic. It did work out well, but I was very lucky.

As it turns out, Microsoft would have been several times better financially, (primarily due to stock appreciation), but I really couldn't see staying there for the five years required for everything to vest.

That's $1.584M in today's dollars, for those wondering.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000000+1994+dollars+to...

Sounds like sour grapes to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_grapes

Did that really need a Wikipedia link? Haha.

Also humorous:

My Girlfriend: What are you reading?

Me: I'm reading an article about this guy that turned down $300,000 from Microsoft to build GitHub.

Her: What in the heck is a GitHub?

Me: A website that acts as a hub for coders to share their Git repositories.

Her: Git repositories? My god, that sounds disturbing!

To be fair, most people misconstrue the moral of the fable as being about envy and bitterness, when it's mainly about rationalization to make one feel better about something unachievable or missed.

What do you think about the Sun lawsuits on MS Java?

Trivia: the last MSJVM updates was actually the DST updates released under the infamous $4k/year EHS DST program.

Java (which I liked) instead of the MS platform (which I didn't)

Could you mention a few things you prefer in Java to C#?

Did C# exist around 1994 - 1998? (I assume this is when geophile's story takes place)

No, it appeared around 2001.

C#, the language, is nicer than Java. However, the Java ecosystem, especially in terms of open source, is way better than C#'s.

I don't know C#. As someone else noted, this was before C# was around. I had been working in C++ for several years prior, (and in fact, built an ORM in and for C++), and Java was a step up in many ways.

The obvious answer. :) Thanks!

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