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After leaving my last startup job I sold the exercised stock on EquityZen, worked fine. Did a pool with some ex-coworkers who were doing the same thing, since buyers on there generally don’t want to bother with small transactions. Wasn’t a huge amount of money by SV standards but still made high 5 digits from it, and was just happy to get my exercise money back. As a bonus I no longer need to care how that company was doing anymore.
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Jan 11, 2020 06:12
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Queen Victorian posted:Anyone here ever had their toilet paper startup stock turn into actual money? I've had equity in 6 startups. 2 went completely boom. One is going nowhere ever. Another will probably just go boom, though the jury is still out. That leaves 2: One made me 60k, which was fine. The other paid off my mid six figgies mortgage. Which was really surprising and awesome. Shame I left 2.5 years of equity on the table when I left though. 
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Jan 11, 2020 16:48
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Yeah. 0, 0, 75k, current place doing ok too
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Jan 11, 2020 16:52
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Oh cool. Yeah, if things go well I’m looking at mid to high 5 figures, maaaaybe breaking 6 figures if things go exceptionally well. If it all goes to hell, whatever.
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Jan 11, 2020 17:15
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Do you need to be exercising a stock to sell it? Say I’ve got some stuff vested, and I want to sell it all once it’s all finished vesting (never trust stocks). Do I need to exercise it immediately, or just right before I want to sell it?
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Jan 11, 2020 23:52
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Pollyanna posted:Do you need to be exercising a stock to sell it? Say I’ve got some stuff vested, and I want to sell it all once it’s all finished vesting (never trust stocks). Do I need to exercise it immediately, or just right before I want to sell it? You need to exercise options to sell stock. If you have stock you can just sell it. Subject to lockout periods, exit times, etc.
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Jan 11, 2020 23:54
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Options expire too
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Jan 11, 2020 23:59
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Blinkz0rz posted:Options expire too Fuckkkk. Okay I’ll figure that out once I get in tomorrow and once the next exercise period rolls around. If nothing is exercising right now, the process is Exercise -> Sell, correct?
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Jan 12, 2020 15:18
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Yeah, you exercise your options to buy stock at your strike price. Then you sell that stock like normal.
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Jan 12, 2020 15:32
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My options were set to expire 90 days after the last day of my employment. I’ve only done this once so not sure how standard that period is.
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Jan 12, 2020 15:39
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Seen 30 days, seen 20 years. Usually negotiable de facto
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Jan 12, 2020 15:43
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Blinkz0rz posted:Yeah, you exercise your options to buy stock at your strike price. Then you sell that stock like normal. So if I exercise my options before the stock rises, then sell after it rises, it’s better than exercising and selling both after the stock rises? If I’m betting the price will rise, should I hold onto the options until I’m ready to sell, then exercise and sell? Stocks are weird.
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Jan 12, 2020 16:09
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Options are given a price. You will be able to buy at that price. So you can buy stock w options for 30 cents guaranteed (strike price) and sell it on an open market for 10 bucks or whatever, that's how you make money If you're out of the money (the strike price is lower than the market price) on startup options, you are turbofucked lol Your decisions for comparison, the significant risks are risk of failure, liquidity of market and taxes. Taxes can turbofuck you in multiple ways
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Jan 12, 2020 16:24
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Pollyanna posted:So if I exercise my options before the stock rises, then sell after it rises, it’s better than exercising and selling both after the stock rises? If I’m betting the price will rise, should I hold onto the options until I’m ready to sell, then exercise and sell? When you exercise your options doesn't matter as long as it's before the expiration. The strike price is what you buy at regardless of the value of the stock. I'll give you an example. My options were awarded in Nov 2015 with a strike of $12.98 and all shares have vested. They expire in 2020. The company's stock is currently valued at $62.09. If I wanted to liquidate right now I'd exercise the 1,000 options at $12.98 for a cost of $12,980. At that point in time those 1,000 shares would be worth $62,090. If I sold to cover I'd end up with $49,110. Because your strike price is fixed there's really no reason to exercise until you're ready to sell unless the stock is nosediving and the company is circling the drain. My plan is to hang on to them until I either leave the company (which iirc requires an exercise) or the options get close to expiring. There's really no reason to do otherwise unless you don't feel confident in the company's performance or you're not comfortable having long term risk in the same instrument as other possible equity comp you might have such as RSU awards or an ESPP arrangement.
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Jan 12, 2020 16:49
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It kind of matters when you exercise. Let's say your strike price is $2 and current price is $10. You have options for 1000 shares If you exercised a year and a day ago and sell now, you'll pay I want to say ~10% cap gains tax on the 8k you made. If you exercise and then immediately sell right now, that 8k is taxed at your normal income tax rate. Don't take this as gospel, double check all the numbers because I could have got something twisted. But there is a tax benefit to exercising and then holding for a year.
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Jan 12, 2020 16:56
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loving that up is how you get turbofucked on taxes. Also that tax applies even if you're not liquid so you may be owing tax you can't pay There are secondary markets for employee stocks. Employer attitudes towards them vary from making their own secondary markets to welcoming them to firing you if you mention it There's a bunch of really good online dealios for simulating how much tax you'll pay. Go use those for a bit bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jan 12, 2020 |
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Jan 12, 2020 16:58
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Achmed Jones posted:It kind of matters when you exercise. Let's say your strike price is $2 and current price is $10. You have options for 1000 shares Yeah that's true, I forgot about short term vs long term cap gains. It depends how much cash you have available to cover your exercise price.
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Jan 12, 2020 17:14
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Blinkz0rz posted:Yeah that's true, I forgot about short term vs long term cap gains. It depends how much cash you have available to cover your exercise price. It's about a bit more than that; you can also be taxed when you exercise the options, on the difference between your strike price and the current value of the stock. For NSOs, that's always taxed as regular income. For ISOs, it is subject to AMT. My strategy with my current employer for 6+ years was to exercise everything that vested immediately, since the strike price was low enough that it wasn't a significant amount of money to risk, while the valuation was low enough that there was either zero or minimal difference that would be taxed. That minimized tax on exercise, and will ensure capital gains tax vs normal income tax whenever I sell. Of course this was a bet that it would be someday worth something and only made sense for me because I had confidence that it would, and the amount of money I was paying to exercise was low enough that I was okay with losing all of it if I was wrong. The most common horror story I'm familiar with is that you work somewhere for a while, vest a ton of stock, the company is doing really well but stock isn't liquid, you leave the company and have 90 days to exercise, but the valuation is so much higher when you do so than when the stock vested that while you can afford the strike price, you can't afford to pay the taxes on exercise, and you either have to forfeit all those deferred earnings, or borrow money to pay the taxes. About 3 years after I started, my company extended the exercise window after leaving the company from 90 days to 5 years, and I stopped exercising immediately upon vest at that point.
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Jan 12, 2020 17:33
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Queen Victorian posted:Anyone here ever had their toilet paper startup stock turn into actual money? 0 and 22k for me. Would have made more money had I worked at a company that compensated me accordingly but that's how it goes.
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Jan 12, 2020 22:52
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I have an interview with a company where I'd be employee 12 and I'm expecting this will go well, given what I know. The last startup the folks were involved with had a great exit, and this is in the same industry. I'm wary, but I'm trying to figure out how to evaluate them. I know to hound them on their runway, and the ordinary job things like benefits, but as employee 12 I'd also have significant equity and say in the product and the company. Anyone have any good advice here? I'm trying to set up a drink with someone I know who has significant experience with this poo poo, but I'm also largely in the dark about this.
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Jan 20, 2020 00:48
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Interview thread in the 'pos has questions
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Jan 20, 2020 01:27
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bob dobbs is dead posted:Interview thread in the 'pos has questions I had bad vibes about the job I have currently and their responses to my bad vibes in the interview sort of convinced me my bad vibes weren't well justified, but they were, oh they were. This place so far doesn't give me bad vibes in any way.
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Jan 20, 2020 23:25
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Yeah, interviews are full of lies on both sides
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Jan 20, 2020 23:28
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RE: Options exercising If you exercise options at a price, you should put in a stop loss order somewhat comfortable to withstand some swings as well to avoid losing your shirt if the stock turns into paper money. If your strike price is something like $10, try a stop-loss around $9 depending upon how wildly the stock seems to go. I'm a tad disappointed with the way the grants worked out with my last company but I saw the cap table at a high level and didn't expect much after preferred stock siphoned up by the investors first. Heck, the fact I got more than some oddball dollars was a surprise for myself.
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Jan 21, 2020 14:57
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I’ll preface this by saying that I’m an anxiety riddled POS and it wouldn’t be the first time that’s clouded my judgment: I recently left a startup-y position with good pay, benefits, trust and lots of interesting, cutting edge work for burnout reasons and becoming the go to dev / PM / etc. for almost every project / epic / story I touched. I’d communicated this, didn’t get much actioned response and grew bitter over time. Management was surprised by my leaving but overwhelming said if I ever wanted to come back the door was open. Through connections I hear things are “getting better”. Fast forward a few months and the new position is fine, but the teams are a bit silo’d and this team’s responsibilities are rather...dry and color by numbers. The interactions and people are also a bit dry and cold with one notable exception. Pretty different than the picture painted during the interview process. Hedonic Treadmill being a thing, I know I’ll adjust and maybe squeeze some positives out of this role, but I’m having strong urges to boomerang back to the old position with the knowledge that while burnout risk is greater my fulfillment will be as well. Any experience with boomeranging / boomerangers? It feels like failing, but so does taking a step backwards in my career.
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Jan 22, 2020 19:36
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Iverron posted:I’ll preface this by saying that I’m an anxiety riddled POS and it wouldn’t be the first time that’s clouded my judgment: I recently left a startup-y position with good pay, benefits, trust and lots of interesting, cutting edge work for burnout reasons and becoming the go to dev / PM / etc. for almost every project / epic / story I touched. I’d communicated this, didn’t get much actioned response and grew bitter over time. Management was surprised by my leaving but overwhelming said if I ever wanted to come back the door was open. Through connections I hear things are “getting better”. Mercenary answer: if the old company will have you back and you can hold out for a year, it looks pretty loving good on a resume. 'Hey I bounce around a lot' is one thing and is kind of the norm in tech - but 'companies want me back after I bounce' that signifies to some skeptical folks that it's never hard feelings and you're valuable enough that you're still wanted back.
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Jan 22, 2020 21:00
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Is there, perhaps, a third company where you could touch computers in your area? I dunno, different phases of my life different places would appeal, maybe you'd prefer to have a job that stops at 5 PM in 6 months and being in a high-touch burnout role would be hell.
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Jan 22, 2020 21:02
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Iverron posted:Through connections I hear things are “getting better”. I've heard this before, I've never gone back to find out what it meant. Imagine it's different for every company, the last one I left was surprised I left, but the code base was just about beyond repair and they never wanted to put any work into fixing it properly. So the number of hours I was working and amount of work I was getting done didn't balance. Said they'd have me back.
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Jan 22, 2020 21:21
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Cuntpunch posted:Mercenary answer: if the old company will have you back and you can hold out for a year, it looks pretty loving good on a resume. 'Hey I bounce around a lot' is one thing and is kind of the norm in tech - but 'companies want me back after I bounce' that signifies to some skeptical folks that it's never hard feelings and you're valuable enough that you're still wanted back. I’ve thought about this as well. I know a year would look good, but it seems like a rarity now that see a hiring manager / eng manager blink at 6 months even. Many in a row perhaps, but still. JawnV6 posted:Is there, perhaps, a third company where you could touch computers in your area? Another possibility, but the stack I work in right now (.NET) can be limiting in a lot of regards despite the recent innovations (see prior reservations / surprises about new job). I’d like to stretch my legs tech wise and the old job would provide a considerably larger surface area to pivot to something like Go, as an example, a few more years down the road.
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Jan 22, 2020 21:56
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I'm in kind of a pickle. I'm in Melbourne, Australia, for those who know the local market and what's available/bargainable etc. Around April last year, I left my job as a team lead at a startup after being completely burned out by it after only a year of employment there. Worth mentioning that after I left, the team fell from 14 members to 2 over the next three or four months, so I wasn't the only one. I decided to take some time off and do some travelling and spent around the next 6 months doing that. I returned and money was getting low so I was pretty desperate to find a job. I fired off some applications, got a couple of responses and a couple were promising so I pursued those. My skillset lies primarily in .NET and specifically I really enjoy working with .NET Core so I was looking for jobs involving .NET Core and devops stuff. So I asked this question in the interview, and I was told that there would be ample opportunity to work on devops stuff (this held true, with the caveat that it's all Azure and it's all very, very manual poo poo) and that their codebase was .NET Core (this is not true, it's all .NET Framework). This would have been a deal-breaker for me if I had been told this up-front. I don't like working with .NET Framework and Windows servers, it just doesn't fit well into the modern cloud approach to things and it's a constant headache. I don't think they mislead me deliberately, I think the contractor that I was taking over from who answered the question was just completely out-of-date on .NET and had no idea what .NET Core was so he misunderstood the question. I was also told the application might occasionally need some out of hours attention if something breaks, since uptime is important - no problem, I'm used to this, it comes with the territory. I've been here a few months now, and it turns out that actually various services break constantly (almost daily) and need to restarted by manually logging into the Windows servers and restarting them. The main application itself is actually hosted on several different VMs in Azure with no ability to auto-scale, instead someone needs to manually start up/stop instances and move them in and out of the availability pool depending on expected demand. There's two websites that do the same thing (both were acquired by the one company, so they were formerly two distinct companies/websites) and I am the only developer on mine vs. around 5-6 developers on the other one. I can keep listing off all the problems but basically I can feel myself becoming completely burnt out again, something I promised I wouldn't let happen again after my last job. I feel like I'm coming into work and banging my head against the wall for 8 hours every day. The code-base is so awful that every time I try to improve something, something else breaks and it takes hours and hours to track down what's going on in the spaghetti code that I've inherited. Here's the pickle. I moved to Melbourne about 2.5 years ago and I am on my third job here. My first job went for 9 months, the second job 1 year, and this one around 4 months. If I move again my resume is going to look seriously spotty. I'm at a loss. I don't know how to get out of this shithole of a rut that I'm in and it's seriously loving with my head. putin is a cunt fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jan 23, 2020 |
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Jan 23, 2020 01:32
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I feel you on the .NET Core thing. I’d gotten pretty used to working in Linux as my last position had migrated to platform agnostic and this one is back to full framework and Windows stack only. If I don’t migrate away from .NET altogether that’s going to be a non-negotiable for me in the future. I’m in a pickle myself, so I won’t say much on the rest except that it sounds like you’ve got a good explanation when the time comes: “In initial conversations I was told X and it’s Y. There are no plans to move to X in the near future and therefore I did not feel the position was a good long term fit.” A good number of .NET resumes are Core-less so they’ll probably just be happy you have experience.
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Jan 23, 2020 01:56
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The only reliable way to not get burned out is to have a drat good batna and use it. Only reliable way to not get bait and switched is to have a backchannel (or do investigation yourself, lol). What you could do now is to bluster and pretend you have a batna, I guess
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Jan 23, 2020 02:04
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If I say "what's a batna?" are you gonna say "batna balls lmao"?
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Jan 23, 2020 02:43
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CPColin posted:If I say "what's a batna?" are you gonna say "batna balls lmao"? Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement
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Jan 23, 2020 03:04
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Batna the negotiating "partner"'s balls lmao
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Jan 23, 2020 03:06
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Best Alternative To salt
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Jan 23, 2020 04:55
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Iverron posted:I feel you on the .NET Core thing. I’d gotten pretty used to working in Linux as my last position had migrated to platform agnostic and this one is back to full framework and Windows stack only. If I don’t migrate away from .NET altogether that’s going to be a non-negotiable for me in the future. Yeah among other things, the Linux thing in particular is really loving my rear end. During my break I did a huge amount of work on a personal project - all in Linux using platform agnostic tech with AWS CI/CD and all kinds of new shiny stuff like Vue for the front end hosted in S3 etc. I was really enjoying it and was looking forward to starting my new job working on .NET Core stuff in Linux all the time. And now this is where I am. Computer janitoring a poorly written and super outdated monolith written in .NET Framework hosted on manually provisioned and maintained Windows servers with a frontend written (badly) in jQuery 
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Jan 23, 2020 04:59
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First I thought: be the change you want to see but after reading that last part I think they lied to you to get you in. "They promised X and not Y and now it all Y and X is nowhere on the horizon" is a pretty good reason to be leaving fast. OTOH, if you keep burning out on jobs, soul search what it is that makes you accept job that you then burn out on. Then avoid those. This could mean changing everything in your life but I would say it is worth it.
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Jan 23, 2020 07:55
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a hot gujju bhabhi posted:I'm in kind of a pickle. It sounds like you would quit tomorrow if you could explain it on your resume. This can be freeing: in a sense, you don't care if you lose this job. You can start saying "no"! When the email comes in telling you that server 3 is down yet again, ignore it. You are not singlehandedly keeping the company afloat, it can survive an hour without your attention. If that's "not good enough", the other team can lend you someone to press the restart button. You've already discovered that you're not going to fix everything singlehandedly overnight. That's ok! With this newfound focus time, brutally triage the problems on your plate. Pick the one that's costing you the most time/frustration/pain each day and make some progress on it. Ignore every other problem until you have made at least a bit of progress. Every minute you can save future-you will compound by giving you more time on the next task. No problem is too insignificant for consideration; if it drives you nuts that builds take 10 minutes when you know they should take 2, start there! You're a team of one, you get to set the agenda. I know it's not the stack you want to work on, and that sucks that you were misled, but people use this stack to ship mostly-working software. The stack isn't the biggest problem. Even if it was, porting everything is probably out of the question right now. If this all sounds terrifying, maybe it's time for a long break. Otherwise, stacking up small victories might be how you turn this into a job you can keep showing up to each morning without an all-consuming sense of dread.
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Jan 23, 2020 09:00
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Iverron posted:Any experience with boomeranging / boomerangers? It feels like failing, but so does taking a step backwards in my career. I never did this myself, but (and maybe this goes without saying) you would have good leverage in the negotiations for your re-hiring. Any person they get off the street is going to be a lot less productive than you for at least their first year, and probably longer, regardless of their other experience. It's an opportunity for you change roles in the organization, or set up clear limits for your responsibilities, or get more compensation. "I'll go back to my old role and risk burning out again for the same pay" should not be on the table. A friend of mine left his job and came back after a year, and he got that promotion that he had been overlooked for (which was the reason he left). Thinking like this, it will not be a failure for you no matter what it might look like on a resume. (And it will look pretty good, as others said.)
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Jan 23, 2020 13:59
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