[elixerprog9]

From his feed:

"like three people thanked me for the two million kronor after tax bonus i gave from my own private money. Others said I was cheap."

Per Google, the exchange rate for Swedish Kronor to US Dollars is 0.12, so 2,000,000 Kronor works out to $240,000, which while certainly a nice and possibly even life-changing bonus is hardly enough to retire on in Sweden given the cost of living.

Considering the company sold for more than $2.5 billion and Mojang had so few employees, Notch could have easily made all of them millionaires while still walking away himself a billionaire. In fact, probably the only reason they didn't all end up rich is because Notch never gave any of his employees any equity in the company whatsoever.

Honestly, "cheap" isn't a completely inaccurate description of his conduct here. But it was his company, and now it's his money, and he can do as he pleases with it, but publicly complainig that his former employees aren't especially grateful to him, despite his relative stinginess (no stock options at all?), is silly.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I'd agree, but remember that the others weren't all in it from the beginning. Notch had already done all the groundwork and the game was massively successful before "Mojang" was even a thing. I think $240,000 bonus on top of their (I assume at least competitive) salaries seems incredibly generous to me - not to mention that they're all still gainfully employed after the sale.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not really a fan and don't have any loyalty either way, it would be good to hear from someone on the inside.

[elixerprog9]

I'm not trying to hate on Notch, just observing that even a small % of equity would have been enough to cover his employees.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I certainly see your point of view, I'm a big believer in equity. Just mulling over the other side of the argument out loud I guess.

[rootlocus]

From what I heard, his "groundwork" was a terrible mess of spaghetti code that was awfully hard to work with. Most likely the only thing he left behind was the IP and fan base.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I meant more the initial marketing and community involvement that helped the game get popular in the first place. Much as it pains me to say it as a developer, code quality isn't everything...

[rootlocus]

You're right. I'm positive that every time a large company acquires a small one, it's because of their community and IP. Code is easily rewritten, and startups aren't making breakthroughs in algorithms. It's not like microsoft didn't have engineers capable of making a minecraft clone. They didn't have the rights to do so.

[andrepd]

Exactly. Obviously MS didn't pay 2.5bil for a messy Java codebase. They paid for the brand, the IP, and the fanbase.

[mikekchar]

If you go look at my githb account you will see lots of spaghetti code that will never be sold for $2.5 billion ;-) It doesn't matter how poor the code was, it was incredibly valuable before anyone else joined the company.

[tomjen3]

So? It obviously did its job well enough and if it no longer does then you refactor it.

It is so, so much more difficult to make a game successful than to make successful game.

[rcraft]

I thought the consensus on HN was that developers would much rather collect competitive salaries instead of options.

This comment from earlier this week comes to mind (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10132343):

"Most people will negotiate for more salary because they understand that options will just fuck them over. Money won't."

No surprise, I guess people want it both ways. Competitive salary AND lots of options.

[lambda]

I'm not sure there necessarily is a "consensus" on HN.

However, in general, people feel that you shouldn't take a very large salary cut just for a few options. Most startups are not going to have a significant exit. Some (like Zynga), will manage to find a way of screwing you out of options if they do have a substantial exit. Only a few will have options that have a very large upside.

So, if your options only add up to some very small percentage of the company, they shouldn't be given in lieu of a very large amount of salary. Sure, you're working on something exciting at a startup and there is some potential upside, so maybe take a 10% salary cut and a few options to compensate for it. But don't take a 50% salary cut (or a 100% cut, where you're only paid in options), and look at your options and say "it's worth it because these have a chance of being worth millions."

[dustingetz]

you've missed some nuance. Options at a startup-of-the-day are not valued. Options at companies that are clearly valuable are highly desirable.

[landryraccoon]

This never made sense to me. The bigger the company, the less valuable the options or stock are (because the value is known - you might as well take an equivalent amount of cash, because the upside is capped). On the other hand, at a tiny company where the options are worthless, you can get way more options more easily. You can actually negotiate for points of the total ownership of the company. Can you ask for 0.01% of Google if you interview there?

If you don't want risk, why would you work at a startup? If you aren't betting on a big exit, why wouldn't you just work at a company like Google or Facebook where your total (guaranteed, risk free) compensation would be far greater?

At my last startup I negotiated for a lower salary and as much equity as I could get, and I asked for more equity with every promotion. Those were the best decisions I ever made. I want to work at a startup because I want more risk, not less.

[elixerprog9]

Notch never offered them the choice.

[rcraft]

They clearly had a choice whether or not to accept the job.

[ryanackley]

A part of me considers this a geek tabloid piece. "Hey everyone, this famous geek is rich and miserable. Omg!" I feel a little guilty even commenting.

Another part of me is disgusted with the way he resents his former employees. There does seem to be a miser mentality at play here. He deserved his success but would he had gotten there without the right people? I sense absolutely no gratitude. Most of them were most likely required to work at Microsoft for a certain period of time to receive their bonuses.

[staticelf]

> He deserved his success but would he had gotten there without the right people?

Not that I care much about this issue, but yes the game was very popular before any company was created.

[ryanackley]

I agree it was popular but I suspect the employees of Mojang contributed more than few hundred thousand dollars worth of value to what would eventually become a $2.5B valuation. I mean that's the idea behind hiring employees. You can't do everything yourself.

[serve_yay]

Not giving equity strikes me as a tactical error, because the hurt feelings seem to be worth a lot more to him than the money he now has and apparently isn't interested in. I understand the justification for not doing it, but it seems like he's paying a different price for it now.

[wolfgke]

At least in Germany (I assume in Sweden it's the same, but IANAL) it is legally very involved to offer equity - this is the reason why it's highly unusual to have equity as part of the compensation.

[gambiting]

Just as a sidenote - nobody gives employees equity in EU. I've worked and know many people who work in IT and being given equity is pretty much unheard of. It's pretty much a US-only practice.

[sp332]

Who said anything about retiring?