[sulam]

This is rude move in several ways. First of all, at several prominent companies where I've worked both as a manager and an individual contributor, you would let the person cliff their year if they made it that far. If you were so bad a fit that it was worth firing you in the first year, they could have fired you in the first six months just as easily.

Which leads me to another way this is rude: when I'm looking at an employment record and I see someone was somewhere 6 months or less, I don't think much of it. Clearly something didn't work out, even if it wasn't mutual. When I see someone having been there one year, I assume there's one of two options: either the employee just wanted to cliff their shares and then move on or the company let them vest and then fired them. Either one of these does not reflect well on the employee. To let you stay 51 weeks and fire you without options is a double whammy -- I'm going to have the same negative reaction and you have no upside. :/

When you look for your next job, you may want to emphasize that you were at UnicornCo for less than a year to avoid this bias or at least offset it some. That will obviously require you to have a reasonable explanation for why there wasn't a good fit, but you were going to need that anyway.

Forgot to add: contesting your unemployment at a reasonably sized company is really unheard of. Even when someone is fired, unless they are fired for cause (like, they stole stuff, harassed someone, etc) you're going to give them unemployment. If I'm interviewing you, this detail will make me want to dig further into your story. Take that as you will.

[nharada]

This is not related directly to OP, but I'm interested to hear opinions from others: Do you really look poorly on someone who quits after a year instead of 6 or 18 months? If so, how far after that year before you don't think poorly of the move anymore? A few months? A year?

[romanhn]

I asked a similar question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233155. As a hiring manager, my short answer is - yes. If there's a bunch of short stints, I won't consider a resume no matter how relevant the experience. If there's proof that you can last at one place for 2+ years, the rest can usually be explained early on and likely won't impact the rest of the process too much.

[hiringmanager]

Your profile says you want to hire people, but your comment here says you are prejudiced.

You're operating from the 1950s veiwpoint which is really a cultural hold over from the great depression- that employees should be desperate to find a job and companies should be free to screen them out for any arbitrary reasons. Let me guess, you make them write code on a white board too.

If you have a one year cliff you are providing a huge financial incentive for your employees to leave after a year, by shifting the risk onto them.

Maybe that's why you don't have enough people already?

[romanhn]

Way to build up an imaginary strawman to argue against. I never claimed any of the things from your comment, I don't make anyone write code on a whiteboard, and I don't have trouble hiring either.

If I'm going to invest into onboarding an employee, training them, providing opportunities for growth, etc. I'm not sure why you find it so disagreeable that I would prefer that they stick around as long as possible. Both parties are free to discontinue the relationship when the fit is no longer there, and that's fine by me.

I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work. Maybe that's just me, though...

[hiringmanager]

>I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work.

Being at a company for a year doesn't tell you someone is like that. This is why I called it a prejudice.

Being at a company for a year can also indicate that the person is quality enough to be choosy about where they work and not to stick around when management proves themselves incompetent.

Most statups fail. Most startups management is very poor. The best software developers realize that they are making an investment by working for a startup. Thus staying around past the first year is a judgement call on the future of the company.

[meowface]

It's completely reasonable to want potential employees who are likely to stay at your company for more than a year. If someone's entire experience is leaving places after less than a year, either they are bad employees who are fired or quit due to performance issues, or they never intend to stick around long anywhere.

For some kinds of work, that's fine, but I think most companies of all kinds would prefer employees who will stay with them for at least a year.

It's totally valid for someone to want to hop companies and favor that lifestyle. But it's also valid for companies to favor people who don't want to hop.

[sfrailsdev]

I think what isn't being mentioned is that sometimes the company changes beneath your feet. Apps get sold and teams get aquihired, friends get let go or leave, roles get redefined; company priorities shift.

[hiringmanager]

And companies turn out to be poorly run.

With the 4 year vesting schedule, employees are incentivized to leave after a year to diversify their holdings.

[maxlybbert]

It's not necessarily a case of expecting candidates to be grateful for even being considered. Avoiding a bad hire is surprisingly important.

[cure]

When I look at resumes, I don't like to see a series of short (less than 18 months, say) stints. It can happen once or twice, no problem - sometimes things just don't work out.

If the resume shows three or more short stints, especially in a row, it's a red flag.

I might still phone screen the candidate if their experience looks relevant and the resume is otherwise impressive, but I'm going to ask about the short positions, and the answer matters a lot.

[whostolemyhat]

Less than 18 months is about the length of time to work somewhere, get a crap raise after an annual review, have a look around and realise you could be better-paid for the same work somewhere else.

Why would you stay at a company where you're being under-paid?

[flukus]

Your avoiding hiring people that get frustrated in crappy environments and rewarding the ones that put with it them or don't know any better.

[romanhn]

Note that he's talking about a series of short stints, not just one or two. If every environment is lousy and warrants immediate exit, perhaps the problem is not entirely with the environments. Chronic complaining without a bias for action is not exactly a positive trait as far as interviewing is concerned.

[Bahamut]

Except most companies are lousy dev shops. Bad practices are endemic at many, and good practices are not practiced a lot. Engineering is often ignored in favor of quick wins.

There are a lot of reasons for quality developers to be dissatisfied with shops out there.

To take myself as an example, in my almost 4 year career, I am in my 5th developer job. I have changed jobs every 10 months or so, excepting one job lasting 3 months due to asinine expectations, and my current one that I am 15 months into and counting. The first two I left for better compensation & more responsibility.

I wasn't one for inaction at my jobs either - I was one who would be a driver of change and better practices. At two of the jobs I was promoted to lead developer, including my current one where I am a hybrid between tech lead & engineering manager.

I have interviewed many candidates over the past two years - I have found that candidates who are able to explain their positions well and are open to considering alternative possibilities tend to be passionate ones who care about what they do, which is a characteristic that is a positive if you want to improve the state of engineering at the company. Short durations often tend to mean that they care more than anyone else at the company, and management/executives are too difficult to fight as they have more power to countermand attempts to make things better if it doesn't align with misguided judgment.

I would recommend you rethink your evaluation skills, speaking as one who it sounds like you'd chase away from being interested because such biases would become obvious over the course of interviewing. I am a respected expert in my domain with significant open source work in it & major open source project stewardship. My company has been rewarded with my finding other high quality developers, as well as me being a strong advocate - all due to the simple choice of having good processes and listening to employees & trusting their professional opinion. It's not surprise that the company has risen into Fortune's top 50 small companies to work for.

[flukus]

> If every environment is lousy and warrants immediate exit, perhaps the problem is not entirely with the environments

Most are like that IME. This is compounded by the fact that these are the companies most frequently hiring.

You've probably seen comments along the lines of 90% of candidates failing fizzbuzz? Remember those candidates work somewhere.

[romanhn]

Don't believe that FizzBuzz trope - there certainly are candidates that can't code their way out of a wet paper bag, but they are hardly the majority. I'll also point out that 90% of companies could care less about time/space complexity, optimized algorithms and data structures more complex than a hash table. Business apps are everywhere and don't require a fancy CS degree - some folks thrive in these environments, for others it's personal hell.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the onus for company/team/culture fit is on both the interviewer and the interviewee. Bad luck aside, there's no excuse for running into irreparably lousy workplaces time and time again.

[cure]

Not exactly; like I said that can happen once or twice. But if it happens 3 times or more in a row, something else is likely going on. And that's a red flag for me when hiring; I don't want to invest in a person only to have them leave very shortly after. That's just a waste of time.

[hiringmanager]

This is silly. What you think these are "bad" employees and the company is figuring it out in the 14th month?

Or are you stuck in the 1950s era idea of loyalty and these employees are not "loyal"-- yet are you considering whether you're giving them a reason to be loyal?

[35bge57dtjku]

I always heard people switch jobs every year in SV.

[hiringmanager]

You seem to imply that an employee being somewhere for one year is a bad sign. That seems like a prejudice.

Sure, staying somewhere only 6 months can be a lack of fit. Staying somewhere a year, though, doesn't mean anything negative. Especially with startups. The startup could have pivoted. The employee could have felt that it was a good fit, then the startup pivoted and they gave the company an additional 6 months. The employee might have done great, but the statup founders chose to hire form outside rather than promote within (Showing a lack of loyalty to their own employees, and to the ones who took the greater risk by being there earlier.)

Also, you should never look down on an employee who chooses to leave after one year even if you know they are doing it because of the cliff.

The option structure of four years of vesting with a 1 year cliff is employee hostile (And startups should not be doing this because it incentivizes your employees to leave.) The first years and even months of a startup are most critical. Therefore, vesting should start nearly immediately, at most a 90 day cliff.

Secondly, the startup cargo culture is set up in a way that does not have a level playing field for founders and early employees. Founders often get RSUs which are 3X as valuable per share as startup options. An employee on a 4 year option plan should quit every company after that first year cliff.

In that way, after four years they have options in four companies... rather than all their eggs in one basket.

RSUs solve this problem by giving them real skin in the game rather than a lottery ticket that is subject to all kinds of founder shenanigans down the line.

Franky, all employees should be getting series-A preferred as it is silly that a Venture Capitalist an put in $10k of 10k shares and get preferences while an employee who gives up $70k in salary gets $70k options that he has to spend another $20k to exercise and even then only gets common.

Why is a VCs money more valuable, dollar for dollar than an employees? It's not because the VC is really going to help the company execute in any significant way-- yet the employee is.

And the delta between market price and salary you're paying employees is a real financial investment on the employees part (another reason you should not have vesting cliffs.)

Given that we have this cargo culture where things are not thought out from first principles and everyone emulates what other startups did we have not only job titles from the 1950s (eg: 21 year old "CEOs" of 4 person companies) but we have option plans that have not changed since the 1970s!)

The right thing for an employee to do in the market where companies are not giving them real skin in the game is to move every year, so that they diversify their lottery tickets.

It's the only smart move.

And that's just looking at options.

When you consider the only time most engineers ever get a raise is when they leave to go work elsewhere, from a salary perspective they should leave each year too.

[VestingBurn]

I think you nailed the biggest issue with being an engineer in startup land. The interests just aren't aligned.

[sulam]

It sure isn't a positive sign.

Also, I think you are confused about startup options. I've never seen a founder get RSUs, there are strong tax reasons to prefer options -- primarily that you can lower your tax payments from regular income to long term capital gains. You can also convert some portion of them to non-qualified options which can be positive for the founder if they leave.

Regarding preferred vs common, again it is in the employee's interest from a tax perspective to receive common shares. The value of preferred to an investor is that it typically has some incentive structure for the founders to grow the value of the company. It also tends to set a minimum bar for an exit. If these hold true, the value of their shares is the same as common, but common was much cheaper. This is important for things like early exercise and whether or not your shares remain above water. The math in your example which implies preferred shares are somehow cheaper than common must have some unstated elements, perhaps the passage of time? Preferred shares are always more expensive, typically 3X or so, at any given time.

Finally the last point I'd like you to consider wraps up the remaining themes in your response. Founder "games" that dilute employees are typically unpleasant for the founder as well and are the result of having to take investment under less than favorable conditions. When this happens investors and company leadership want to incent people who are still present, not people who put a year in and left. Also your desire to start earning shares right away vs cliffing seems internally consistent with what seems like your desire to use your time the way an investor uses their money -- i.e. spread it around liberally to hedge your bets. That's fine for you to want, but if I'm a founder, I am all-in on this one thing, and I am looking for employees who are also all-in, or as close as I can get to that in the marketplace. Of course the market usually resolves somewhere in between -- I get employees who stay at least a year, preferably more like two or three and (if we are doing really well) sometimes longer. Meanwhile it takes more like 10 years on average to achieve a reasonable exit, so in the time I am slogging away, they can get meaningful exposure to 2-4 other companies. This is worse than what a VC gets in the same amount of time but the VC brings liquid capital to the picture, among other things. The current climate devalues money, but it's still necessary to remain in business in any meaningful way and the value of six months of a new engineer's time is usually far lower than what you are imagining. There are of course exceptions -- you can be a true mercenary and consult to startups in exchange for stock and an hourly rate, but you need very strong experience to make this appealing to the startup and of course your base will generally not be the same as an employee taking the equivalent role. My wife has done this, and it's workable but not awesome long term in my opinion. And then there is the extremely light weight version of this, which is to advise startups in exchange for equity. You have to bring commensurately more to the table for this to be appealing to the startup, and you likely won't see any cash out of it for a long time (in fact the times I have done this I will end up spending money on the company in the form of investing and at least early exercising my shares).

Long story short, feel free to bargain for whatever you want, just realize that achieving alignment on terms will require some give on both sides, and be sure not to over play your hand -- it is hard to hire engineers, but not impossible! And honestly one year cliffs are not the place to negotiate, because the company is unlikely to give on that. Go the consultant route if you really want to be a mercenary -- and if you find a rocket ship you can always sign on as an employee.

One last thing -- being an employee has paid for my house and my kid's education. The stock you get isn't always meaningful, but it can be!

[hiringmanager]

I'd be happy to be at a company for 5-10 years and grow it, that's my preference. I don't want to be a mercenary. The problem is the companies are operating in a way that doesn't incentivize me to do os, by playing games that devalue my contribution. If that's the way they are going to go, then I should hop to diversify my portfolio.

IF you're a founder and you're working for options rather than RSUs, you got screwed.