Re:Finding Time to Invest in Yourself
by brenden2 on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @02:36PM
(#22057640)
FWIW my Airbnb stock was worth about $1mm/year when I joined (in 2013 as a IC SWE). To be fair, the starting salary was well below market, but I got a raise to bring it up to the market rate about 1 year in. I've since never seen a startup that generous, only FAANGs come close.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
That's super interesting, but Airbnb in 2013 was long past the seed stage, and when we talk about early engineers that's what we mean, no? Those are the startups that have the chicken/egg problem with hiring.
Not that it's a minor point if Airbnb was that far ahead in employee compensation.
They gave you stock rather than options? Is that usual at that stage?
Any offer I've seen from a startup (admittedly a small sample size, and always later stage) has been options rather than stock, and I've never heard of a company providing enough information to actually value the options.
Re:Finding Time to Invest in Yourself
by brenden2 on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:48PM
(#22059104)
To clarify, I was granted options, although they did switch to RSUs later on.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. So they became worth $1mm/year, that wasn't the fair market value when they were granted?
Re:Finding Time to Invest in Yourself
by brenden2 on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @05:03PM
(#22059268)
I was granted 36,000 shares (or options to buy shares), vesting over 4 years, with a strike price near $4. IIRC, preferred share price was ~$120 in 2015, but I don't recall the precise details. AFAIK there were no refreshers of any kind while I was there.
I think the amount I got was pretty standard for an engineer, but I also know some engineers received 4 or 5 times as much, and others got half that. I think the recruiters had a lot of discretion to decide how much to hand out in order to hire great people.
According to this article the common shares were worth ~$120 in 2019. Preferred will be different from common, but this would mean the investors saw no gains from 2015 to 2019.
Either some info is incorrect somewhere, or there was some split or valuation indeed didn't change much in 4 years.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/19/18272274/airbnb-valuation-comm...