> I just throw them away and buy my own regular potatoes to supplement.
Please don't do this if you can avoid it. I used to do the same (not with Blue Apron admittedly, but food in general) until I volunteered at our local food shelter one day and saw how they survived on donations some of which were surprisingly small. Often those small donations would be turned into snacks that people could take with them for sustenance throughout the night. They would never turn down healthy, nutritious food that wasn't spoiled. I realize it can be a PITA and there may not be a shelter near you, but if it's possible please consider it as an alternative to throwing good food away especially something that stores pretty well.
I've worked with the homeless and I grew up on WIC and welfare and relied on the kindness of strangers so I understand the plight, but I'm not driving 15 miles into the city and paying for parking to donate one sweet potato every couple of weeks. They'd be better served with a $5 check.
While I generally agree with your main point, I have witnessed engineers who espouse equality publicly until their own remuneration is the topic of discussion, at which point self-interest kicks in and "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..." becomes the private narrative.
While a lot of progress has been made in reducing the gender wage gap in tech, we still have a long way to go.
> "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..."
Unless "x, y, and z" include "because I'm a man and she's a woman" then I don't really understand your point. Of course most employees think they're underpaid, and they can all come up with reasons, due to performance on the job, specific incidents, experience, and level of education why they should be paid more.
How is that related at all to gender wage gap in any industry, let alone tech specifically?
Of course everyone tries to have the best salary possible, the same is expected for both men and women and that's a good thing.
I mean, even if I'm willing to get a hit on my salary in the name of gender equality, I'm pretty sure the money will go in upper management's pocket and not my female counterparts.
It's usually in the underlying option plan I believe. I think the challenge with changing the 90 day window is that you run the risk of the option not qualifying as an ISO. If that's the case, it would instead be classified as a non-qualified stock option and the holder would lose the capital gains benefits and be subject to ordinary income tax (IANAL though, so could be way off base).
This is roughly correct. The 90-day exercise window isn't just something made up out of thin air to handcuff employees and keep them from leaving.
It's explicitly written into the tax code that an option must be exercised within 90 days of leaving a company if the option is to be treated as an ISO. ISOs are arguably more advantageous than NSOs, which is why this is the default.
A workaround is to convert ISOs to NSOs after 90 days. Quora adopted that policy a while ago and a lot of companies followed suit (Square and Pintrest to name a few). Sam A now recommends that approach - http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity
That sounds suspect to me. The company I work for gives 90 days + 1 month for every 1 month over a year you work there (so work there 2 years and you have 1 year, 90 days to exercise after leaving).
Do they keep you employed for that month? It's fairly common to extend your termination date for health insurance and visa reasons. If you aren't actually terminated, the 90 days wouldn't have started.
The sentence was slightly hard to parse so you may have missed that you get an extra month for each month you are employed over 1 year. So the stated example of a 2 year tenure gives 1 year and 90 days to purchase the options.
>I'd expect that in most high-growth companies the impact of individual contributors quickly gets washed away after they leave
I'd argue it's the opposite. Early employees often have an outsized impact on the trajectory of a company and get it to a point where additional hiring is possible. Future generations of workers tend to iterate on the existing (unless there's a significant pivot) and come on board in a more de-risked situation often with salaries much closer to market.
Most start-ups also present equity as a form of compensation for work performed (trading cash for illiquid options). To take away that earned and vested compensation component because an employee doesn't have the money to exercise within the 90 day is not only arbitrarily absurd but also grossly unfair in my opinion.
> Early employees often have an outsized impact on the trajectory of a company
Mmm... I think we'll have to agree to disagree there... Seems to me that the bulk of the work adding value in a company, even if it's "just maintenance", is in the marathon and not the sprint. The initial engineers who contributed to Google Search no doubt contributed value but it's the folks who kept it going strong (and changing for the better) for many years afterwards that are the real company heroes.
And if someone is really such a special snowflake, I don't see why they'd bother working for someone else instead of founding their own company. If they expect to get paid proportionally that is.
> get it to a point where additional hiring is possible
Usually investors do this by injecting cash, at least in your traditional high growth "startup".
> To take away that earned and vested compensation ... is ... grossly unfair
How is it unfair if the employee agrees to the terms walking in?
If Joe Vendor down the street sells something to you at a loss, do you feel bad about buying it anyway? Likely not, since he happily signed it over to you for a reduced price.
If a company really believes that, they're free to back-load their grants and vesting. The reason they generally don't do this is because "dead equity" isn't a real problem. I'm nearly certain most employee options go unexercised. For one thing, most employees don't vest their full grant before they move on. And those that do often can't afford to buy it anyway.
The one exception might be the handful of employees that joined before the first big round, who might still be able to exercise at a negligible strike price. Again, I don't think it's a real problem in the grand scheme of things.
I think they started their life as a crowdfunding platform but then pivoted to focus on payments. I remember seeing their logo on the ESPN fantasy football site a year or so ago, so I assume they struck a partnership deal for leagues to collect their dues. As someone else has suggested above, the appeal to AirBnB is probably acquiring the tech to make it easier for large groups to split costs.
Unfortunately, he's probably not helping his cause by hanging around at this point. I'm sure he has his reasons - family, mortgage etc - but a lot of recruiters likely treat those who remained despite the damning revelations very differently to those who jumped as soon as the writing was on the wall.
>Most assholes don't have that level of reflection so I'm not going to be too harsh
I think that's what differentiates your run-of-the-mill asshole from a sociopath.
While the author doesn't do a great job at eliciting sympathy (if that was even his goal?), I can imagine the weeks/months/years after an exit can be tough on someone who has invested so much of their personal worth in a single entity. I think certain personality traits thrive in the start-up founder world, but the things that make those people succeed also leave them susceptible to massive emotional lows once the story is over and the dream is realized.
It's amazing how many people I know who have subscribed to the WaPo in the last 12 months. I know, I know - echo chamber - but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future. If executed properly, most people are willing to pay for quality content (side note: a major pet peeve of mine is when you pay for a subscription and are then bombarded with obnoxious pop-up ads whenever you try to access said paid content online).
I've been a long-term WSJ subscriber and recently switched to the digital-only subscription due to the quality of their tablet app, but it remains a guilty pleasure of mine to buy up a selection of hard copy newspapers on a rainy weekend and lock myself away for hours.
Once flying from Dubai to DC I got a free copy of Sunday Financial times. It had huge number of topics. I would have never gotten all this stuff in one place sitting in front of Internet.
Funnily enough, I'm also a subscriber of the FT! The app has the full newspaper ordered in the same way (Lex, The Big Read etc) and provides a pretty great experience for a digital consumer. It's not quite the same as having a hard copy in your hands, but for ease of access and portability - I can read it wherever I am in the world - it really is a fantastic product.
You'll note that the two stories are directly contradictory. The claim made by the WaPo is stronger than Senator Sanders' and yet Senator Sanders received 4 Pinocchios for the claim.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that before. I still value a lot of the work they did last year, but it's a great reminder to keep a critical eye on what I consume. Now, please don't tell me the WSJ and FT are guilty of the same offenses? I'm not sure I can handle that much disappointment in one day.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the WSJ is Rupert Murdoch's paper. Take a look at their editorial page.
In this case I think the WaPo fact-checker was unfair in handing out Pinocchios. Four Pinocchios should be reserved for bald-faced, baseless falsities. In this case, Bernie had a source, based directly off of research. The "fact checker" criticized the details, application, and methodology of these conclusions, and offered its own, completely speculative conclusion that the real number is lower. I'm not saying this didn't deserve a Pinocchio or two, but I do think it's a bad call. That doesn't make it worthless, but I do think it certainly undermines its credibility a bit.
Yes, I think that's the key distinction. Kodi is available (for example) in the Play Store so selling a box with it pre-installed is not illegal. However, if you go the extra step and include the piracy add-ons and (potentially) a subscription IPTV service then you've overstepped the line.
Please don't do this if you can avoid it. I used to do the same (not with Blue Apron admittedly, but food in general) until I volunteered at our local food shelter one day and saw how they survived on donations some of which were surprisingly small. Often those small donations would be turned into snacks that people could take with them for sustenance throughout the night. They would never turn down healthy, nutritious food that wasn't spoiled. I realize it can be a PITA and there may not be a shelter near you, but if it's possible please consider it as an alternative to throwing good food away especially something that stores pretty well.