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Re:I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation by etatoby on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @07:30AM (#12253810)
> you will be kicking yourself really hard because if you'd only prepared, you could've been paying LTCG... AMT... illiquid stock... IRS... CA FTB... ACME... Road Runner...

Look, I won't be kicking myself neither hard not soft, because I made a conscious decision to study and become proficient in another field.

You finance people work under the assumption that everybody cares—or should care—about the underlying concepts of your field, not to mention the details such as jargon and acronyms, just because we have to use money to conduct our daily life. That's demonstrably false.

It would be like assuming everybody who uses a smartphone should care and become proficient on TCP, signals, sockets, PIDs, scheduler priorities, and what not. In a word, foolish.

Considering the stock options you're given basically worthless, unless fortuitously proven otherwise, and making your employment decisions based on salary alone (and other non-monetary factors) is a valid strategy, because it allows you to avoid having to invest time into studying and understanding all those foreign concepts. Since time is a finite resource, choosing how to spend it while still having your butt covered is great advice.

On the other hand, if you are a founder of have otherwise invested a considerable amount of time and energy into those shares, it would be foolish not to seek professional advice on their management, as the article rightly points out.

Re:I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation by gaius on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @09:32AM (#12254335)
You finance people work under the assumption that everybody cares—or should care—about the underlying concepts of your field

Those aren't finance terms, they are taxpayer terms! Long term capital gains, alternative minimum tax, everyone knows who the IRS are...

Re:I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation by hifumi on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @10:09AM (#12254565)
But those acronyms are vague and I had no idea what they were until you spelled them out.
Re:I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation by 1812Overture on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @04:03PM (#12257343)
That's the point of the article.
Re:I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation by kspaans on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @10:08AM (#12254557)
Understanding how much you owe the IRS in taxes is personal finance, which isn't the same thing as business finance.
Re:I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation by YuriNiyazov on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @01:44PM (#12256351)
This is tax jargon. Death and taxes, everyone should care about those two.
Re:I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation by marssaxman on Thursday August 11, 2016 @07:06PM (#12272327)
I care about taxes, sure; that's why I delegate the problem to a competent professional.