CapnObvious

well thats good then. you'll certainly learn a lot from this experience whether the company is boom or bust.

good luck!

I've heard a similar BS line before "Oh, here's 100,000 shares, but we can't tell you the total number of outstanding shares because _________" (fill in the blank excuse: it's confidential, Mr Rogers likes chocolate, I'm constipated, whatever).

If you don't know the total number of shares and the percentage stake of that you've been offered, and the price of your options, the number of shares is worthless.

I think in this situation, a startup will usually say this when they're trying to screw you, but that's just my opinion. Keep in mind they will likely fail and your 30k options will be nothing but a piece of paper.

My advice? Find another company to work for that is less shady.

As a developer and an end-user, I don't like anything that requires a plugin, and I feel that is the consensus among everyone but desktop developers.

Well written AJAX & Java just work better and don't require some annoying plugin, download, or upgrade.

And on a sidenote, if you're on a Mac pay attention to CPU and memory usage anytime the slightest amount of flash is being used on a page, it skyrockets, totally inefficient for no particular reason. It seems SLIGHTLY better in Windows but it's still a total resource hog.

As the 5th member that's pretty low. Last year I was offered 1.5% and would have been the 12th employee at a company that had been around just under a year, the only reason I didn't take it was the salary was too low to live any kind of half-enjoyable life. Now of course the company has about 35 employees and they seem to be doing well, although they're in a saturated market and I can't imagine them fairing very well in an economic depression. At this point I'll only kick myself if they get acquired and my 1.5% is suddenly worth upper 6 to low 7 figures.

If you're to be the 5th and crucial member, I'd fight for more or don't bother. The fact is most startups don't get acquired and you aren't going to get rewarded for your 80 hour weeks and below market salary - but you will have learned a lot and you'll probably have less hair.

For Meebo to really monetize all their traffic they'll have to start extracting information from conversations. Google and Facebook already do this to an occasionally creepy effect, notice the content of your talk/messages and your ads are often identical.

They'd be better off providing this demographic information to a third party advertiser than trying to sell anything on their own platform.

I love Meebo, and use it every day, but there's no way I'm going to click an ad in an IM window. As soon as AIM started throwing ads up I ditched their client and went with GAIM(pidgin now), I'd do the same thing with Meebo if they started plastering crap blinking ringtone ads all over.

I hate NYT for requiring me to register and login to their site. I have created about 30 logins and I always forget them anytime I use a new browser, or am at a new location, after a fresh install, new computer, whatever.

F you, NYT. I don't read any of your crap because of it.

Any significant 'raise' will require you to either change jobs, or to get a new position within the current company that suddenly takes on a lot more responsibility, and even that will limit you to maybe 10%.

Get a bit of experience and start shopping around, that's how you'll know what you're worth.

Note that the real value of a salary is almost entirely dependent on your location and cost of living.