memmove33

What is the reason why they were diluted in your case? Was it "nefarious" (e.g. targeted specifically at you) or just a consequence of unfortunate circumstances (e.g. heavy downturn, aggressive liquidation preferences, ...)?

How is it possible to "dilute employees" from a technical point of view? Most of the times, even early employees, VPs and founders have common stocks, so how can one legally dilute just some employees without screwing the other common holders? Genuinely curious.

It would be nice to know how good this liquidity deal is for early/late employees, after taking into account all dilutions, liquidation preferences and "misc royalties" of preferred shares holders.

Could bring some hope (or one more slap in the face) for us easily screwable early startup employees.

Thanks for your reply! I am honestly very scared by the coding challenge I would have to pass for a SRE role :(

As fuzzy-logic said, just don't reveal your total comp, and be willing to walk away from it for real (walking away from such juicy offers requires the most determination, so it's important you do it from a position of power, for example if you already have a good job, otherwise they have you by the balls).

The only case where it can be beneficial to disclose something about your compensation is if you have deferred compensation (e.g. stock options) that you want your potential new employer to somehow consider in the offer. In that case, sharing a copy of the grant is the easiest thing to do, and doesn't hurt much

One last data point for you and then I'll stop, since you don't seem willing to believe me anyway.

Did you ever read Chaos Monkey? (https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...)

The author was a founder of a very little startup (3-men shop) and after 6 months tried to approach Facebook to be acquired, and Facebook told him: we don't want your technology, but since you have proven to be capable of building something exceptional, we want you to join (and you can throw away your product), and we'll offer you $2-3M (don't recall the exact number) in RSUs with a 4y vesting schedule, which he clearly accepted.

Now, those "acqui-hires" happen all the time among those big companies. Since the acquiring company is clearly not interested in the product but just in the talent, how is that different than getting in the door as a really solid individual contributor with terrific experience in getting stuff done (of course, your resume and interview skills need to reflect that, and also, probably even more importantly, your negotiation skills). You can choose to not believe me, but the answer is that there is no difference at all.

If you live in the valley, I can't believe you don't have an acquaintance who followed exactly the path of being individually "acqui-hired" as a talented individual contributor (but not being part of a real acquisition, mind you), which is exactly what happened to my two friends described above (no direct reports, purely technical gig). They are very very good in their fields and managed to sell themselves very well to the right teams inside those big companies.

Poor formatting (editing from mobile). $150k is base salary. $1.8M is the additional RSU grant with 4 year vesting schedule heavily negotiated prior to joining (in these examples, with a bidding war between google, fb and another very big company).

Also, I can personally testify how important negotiating the offer is. I routinely (every ~2y) interview to discover my market value and, from a position of power (e.g. "Well I'm happily employed at the moment so the incentive has to be good" or "I have a higher offer"), is very easy to negotiate additional stocks. I've been able to improve the offer by a good $100k yearly RSUs (!!) just by negotiating with HR. It also helps that I kind of like the process (I'm that weird person who gets thrilled by buying a new car and making a car salesman lose his patience by constantly asking a better offer and absolutely be ready to leave if it doesn't happen)

Well, that's simply true. Two close acquaintances go like this:

- age: 29 base: ~150k, RSU package: 1.8M negotiated upon joining (4y vesting)

- age: 34 base: ~250k, RSU package: 3M, same terms

Both are very solid individual contributors, smartest guys in my personal network for sure.

It's really not hard to believe. Another acquaintance of mine works at a very big Hadoop startup here in the bay (guess name) as a product manager, and her total compensation is around 350k a year. It's not surprising to have a very solid engineer get some multiple of that.

As a further data point, some people in my personal network of comparable experience and age are pulling 500-700k a year from Google/fb. That of course includes RSUs, but that's literally the total compensation they are able to translate into hard cash every single year.

I make that much: Senior Software Engineer at a startup (joined among the first 3 hires), Bay Area. About 6 years of experience.

200k$ base salary

50k$ performance bonus

1% ISOs (after considering dilutions. Company is ~1y post Series B)

Senior Software Engineer at a startup (joined among the first 3 hires), Bay Area.

200k$ base salary

50k$ performance bonus

1% ISOs (after considering dilutions. Company is ~1y post Series B)