notbitter

5 ms·

1.
by notbitter 5y ago
Care to share some of that real data? You're right about the haze of wishful thinking around the issue and seem to be in a position to clear it up a bit. You can infer something about the value of face time from the universal FAANG com
2.
by notbitter 14y ago
For better or for worse, the system is named "capitalism" not "hardworkerism". In the "you can't cheat an honest man" department, you can be sure that some of the engineers complaining about nepotism now were expecting to cash in on the CEO
3.
by notbitter 14y ago
This one is really stretching the definition of an acquihire. It may be that the $2-$5M is unvested stock for the team itself. See points 3-6 here: http://daslee.me/quick-thoughts-on-acquihiressoft-landings
4.
by notbitter 14y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4306256
5.
by notbitter 14y ago
The cynic in you is right. The employees have power in an acqui-hire, but they don't negotiate as a group.
6.
by notbitter 14y ago
If you avoid the questions "why was this written" and "how did it get from the author to my eyeballs" you will never develop a working bullshit detector.
7.
by notbitter 14y ago
Thanks for your passive-aggressive reply. My comment was directed at the author, not at you. I don't know what if any connection you have to the author. However, you should note the content-free enthusiastic comment by LeonW, posted right a
8.
by notbitter 14y ago
You are actually hurting startup founders by farting out this HN-optimized fluff of platitudes and having your co-founder vote it up. Please stop it.
9.
by notbitter 14y ago
None of my software-engineer friends are doing things they don't want to do. Your friends sound young.
10.
by notbitter 14y ago
They are bullshitting you. Big companies can have rigid salary structures, but at a startup you have lower pay because that's what you accepted. The degree argument is a negotiating tactic to get you to accept lower pay. That said, if you d
11.
by notbitter 14y ago
terminology around this issue can be VERY confusing You are not making it any simpler by redefining "control" in this theoretical way. You are making some very naive assumptions about independence: you'd be much better off treating the in
12.
by notbitter 14y ago
Founder shares get diluted in a down round, but employee options go completely underwater.
13.
by notbitter 14y ago
Some of the advantages listed in the article are questionable. A talent pool so small that everybody knows each other, potential partners who are so out of the loop that they don't know about your established competitors, and the opportunit
14.
by notbitter 14y ago
Google has some inner conflict here. The marketing strategy is "more private than Facebook" but the obvious way to measure the success of Google+ is by how much oversharing people are doing. Optimize for that and you get pushy UX like the o
15.
by notbitter 14y ago
This is human nature, not specific to geeks or men. If you call somebody on their bullshit you have to expect some blowback, even if you do it as tactfully as Jessamyn did in this case. What's sad is that one of the guys on the team could h
16.
by notbitter 15y ago
Usually: millions to the investors and founders for their stock. Employee stock will be worth little due to investor preferences. The acquirer will pay hundreds of thousands to retain a few "key employees", and tens of thousands to the ordi
17.
by notbitter 15y ago
This looks like fake reporting, written by some SEO hack and paid for by the owner of one of the domains in question.
18.
by notbitter 15y ago
Totally disagree on #2. Walking into a better gig is easy, but it means you lose years of investment in the previous company (due to dilution, preferences, loss of retention bonus on acquisition, etc). Many of us on the engineering side con
19.
by notbitter 15y ago
This is shockingly irresponsible advice. Standard investment advice is that you should become more risk-averse with age. Entrepreneurship is high risk and high reward. Why not "invest" your retirement savings in lottery tickets while you're
20.
by notbitter 15y ago
The most likely exit for today's startups is a talent acquisition. In that event, would you rather be at an "undercapitalized" startup or an "overcapitalized" startup?
21.
by notbitter 15y ago
Startups are risky to begin with, but raising a big round shifts the risk from founders to employees. Based on the emails I get from recruiters bragging about how much money their companies have raised, it's clear that most engineers don't
22.
by notbitter 15y ago
Sure, the VCs know how to take care of themselves, but what about the risk of putting your employees underwater?
23.
by notbitter 15y ago
Talent ... As a rule of thumb, these acquisitions are priced at approximately $1M/engineer Of which more than 90% will go to the founders and investors. The engineers being bought for $1M will be lucky to get $100K out of it. Anybody out
24.
by notbitter 15y ago
This is why Gowalla's investors are diversified across multiple startups. For them this is just one setback in a much larger game. The people getting screwed here are Gowalla's employees, who put years of effort into a single project and w
25.
by notbitter 15y ago
Because the common stockholders don't have a seat at the table. Instead, when the company decides to sell, the execs fully dilute the common by granting themselves the remainder of the pool (with acceleration on change of control, of course
26.
by notbitter 15y ago
Well that just scared the crap out of me. Fortunately, the rest of the net believes that you have 30 days from the date of purchase .
27.
by notbitter 15y ago
Actually, it looks like Fred Wilson did an example here: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/10/liquidation-analysis-continu... Note that his example does not show a multiple on the liquidation preference, and it doesn't show how the early emplo
28.
by notbitter 15y ago
Unfortunately not. The people who have that spreadsheet would find it very hard to hire if employees knew how the game was rigged.
29.
by notbitter 15y ago
When investors talk about dilution numbers they only present the best case scenario, and this post is no exception. If you really want to understand dilution, don't look at the best case. You need a graph showing your payoff as a function
30.
by notbitter 15y ago
Glad to hear it. Chrome is great in every other way.

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