[throwaway93192]

I'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago.

For all employees that are considering joining a startup as rank-and-file engineers and putting in years of effort, remember that your compensation will be paltry compared to founders and top execs. When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them.

Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them.

[lsc]

>Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them.

so personally? I don't care about the imbalance, I care about what I'm getting and how that compares to what I can get elsewhere. I understand I'm playing in a rich man's sandbox, and I'm okay with that. The fact that the man three levels up makes ridiculously more than I do doesn't diminish the fact that I'm getting treated better (mostly measured in getting paid better) than I would be at the next best job I could get.

That said, if I was an investor in the company and not another beneficiary of investor largess, I'd be pissed.

[Frondo]

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too.

Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone.

Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave the world a better place for my successors; not just the same status quo. What's the point of life otherwise?

[lsc]

>Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave the world a better place for my successors; not just the same status quo. What's the point of life otherwise?

dude, I'm a silicon valley computer technician. I literally make 10x what the service people I see every day make, and on top of that, my employer cooks gourmet meals for me, 3x a day, and provides a luxury bus system. Yes, I'm at near the bottom of my local technical prestige hierarchy, but If you think these are crumbs, If you don't think that this is worth a little bit of bowing and scraping, I think you need to stop and look around... look at how normal people live.

If you want to work to make the world a better place, If you want to alleviate suffering, work to raise the salaries of those who make 1/10th what we do.

[Frondo]

Look, frankly speaking, if you're content with your lot in life, that's great. I'm happy for you.

Telling me to focus on the low-paid service workers is a nice distraction, but that's what it is: there are other groups working to improve their working conditions and working lives. I'm not connected to them, because I'm in the same pretty-well-compensated boat as you.

Maybe you're paid well, maybe you don't think you deserve more. Your employer almost certainly could pay you more, could give you more time off, more say in your job role, more flex time, whatever, but you don't seem to want more.

Again, good for you. Just don't tell the rest of us that none of us should want more pay, time off, autonomy, a voice in how the company is run, or whatever. If you want to hold fast to your own one-man empire of crumbs, go for it.

The rest of us can band together and work for more of that good stuff that comes with working and bargaining together.

[lsc]

Ah, the spirit of Glompers. "More" - fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with that, but really, there's no reason for anyone outside of your group to support you any more than there is for you to support my own personal quest for more money. It's just a larger empire of crumbs.

The problem is that I don't think this will work, for the same reason that management generally doesn't unionize. Management doesn't unionize because their role is to act in the interest of capital. If capital thinks that management is in it for themselves, management becomes dramatically less useful. (and really, I think that we see a lot of management capture of resources that would normally flow to capital. Management is less useful to capital than it has been in the past. Capital knows this.)

In the ways that matter to these discussions, people who create and manage automation infrastructure are management. It's just that we manage machines that do work, rather than humans that do work. For the same reason that management that was not seen as acting in the interests of capital is worthless, developers who are seen as not acting in the interests of capital will be seen as worthless, too. (I mean, from the perspective of capital.)

Now, I do think that culturally, we are very different and there are some things we could argue for that would improve our lot and that of capital. really, in some ways, I'm very much in agreement that technical workers should be getting a lot of what capital currently gives to management. We can start by making a culture of open salaries. this will eliminate a lot of what management's job is, at our level, which is to individually and secretly negotiate salaries. There's no reason to pay tech workers who negotiate well more than those who don't, so job roles should have pay rates that are known throughout the company. (Of course, there is still negotiation involved in who gets what role, but I think that's negotiation that the technically inclined are better equipped to deal with than straight secret salary negotiations.)

[Frondo]

OK, fine, so you don't think it'll work. That's a whole different story from "we shouldn't want more, we're already well paid".

If I'm going to be an Adam Smith-style rational economic actor, I'm going to seek to maximize my profit. If I don't, I'm leaving money/time/autonomy/working conditions on the table, and why on earth would I do that?

If the most effective way to do that is to organize and negotiate together with my fellow workers at Megacorp X--which is both ethically permissible (freedom of assembly, etc) and our legal right--why wouldn't I do that??

If your answer comes down to "you have enough" then you're already behaving like an irrational economic actor and I have no idea why I'd listen to you.

If your answer comes down to "it's hard," well, buck up, kid, life is hard.

[sandworm101]

You are being fooled. Those meals and buses are to keep you at work. Anything other than cash only ties you more tightly to the company. Demand money, not better snacks at the company store.

[swampthinker]

Edit: Sorry, I shouldn't have said "you". I don't know your situation or how much you make, this is a very broad rant that is based off of previous discussions I've had.

This has to be the most pretentious thing I read in a while. You get paid 6-figures with incredible benefits, while making 2-3x of what the median HOUSEHOLD in this country makes[1], with one of the highest average base salaries, and your individual income ceiling is approximately $180-$200k.

All of this, without having to risk your health like many other blue collar jobs.

All of this, attainable very quickly after graduating college (if you even get to graduating).

Feel free to demand the amount of money you think you deserve. I do think programmers are underpaid for the value they create. But don't make it seem like engineers are lowly serfs or something of that ilk. You have it so much better than most Americans.

[1] $59,039 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-census-median-income-2017-...

[TheKarateKid]

You're failing to look at the situation in terms of perspective relative to the company - not society in general. Sandworm's point is that why should someone 2 levels above you be receiving 100x your salary?

Imagine you were at Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone gets a full plate of food, but you only get a quarter of a plate. Is that fair? Should you keep quiet since you're fortunately to have any food at all, rather than homeless on the street? It's all about relativity. Compare apples to apples.

[dlwdlw]

I think you're missing something fundamental about wanting and it's that we are wired to always want more. I think it's useful to accept this as something universal so we can understand why others and ourselves act the way we do.

One is that it accepts the imperfect was of others instead of deriding that others are not perfect from a moral high ground. The other is that it prevents ourselves from playing the victim.

It acknowledges the common strengths in each human by also acknowledging the common weaknesses.

At each level of the "game" , whichever game you playing, there always exists a master/slave winner/loser relationship. A pseudo happiness is achieved when comparing with other games and works both ways. "I'm glad I'm not a minimal wage monkey" and "I'm glad I'm not a souless sellout."

The games can be stratified into economic divisions but in terms of striving and human drama they are quite similar. The poor person who has never tasted really expensive food gets the same pleasure from something more simple than a rich person who has numbed his palate does from the most expensive things.

Acknowledging this constant suffering by everyone is the most humane thing you can do and is the only way out of the game of dehumanization others for the purpose of humanizing the self.

[sandworm101]

Lol. Money isnt everything. I stopped being an IT lawyer and joined the air force. Now im paid to do things that silicon valley hotshots only do in video games. Fancy meals? I just ate a burger while wearing a flightsuit. Tasted better than a thousand billable-hour lunches.

[snakeboy]

> You are being fooled. Those meals and buses are to keep you at work.

It would be extremely naive to think otherwise at this point, so I'm sure the parent is aware and enjoys the benefits despite the ulterior motives behind them.

[lsc]

> You are being fooled. Those meals and buses are to keep you at work. Anything other than cash only ties you more tightly to the company. Demand money, not better snacks at the company store.

I'm not being fooled. I totally understand the company's goal is to get more work out of me, but they are doing that in ways that make my life better, too. It's one of those situations where both parties to a trade come out better..

the food is really good, which means I don't waste time going across town (one of the unfortunate realities of most of silicon valley is that the homes, the food, and the offices almost always require driving to get between) - and dinner? well, again, I could drive more, or I could prepare food myself. Both are things I don't enjoy, that take a lot of time and that I'm not very good at. Employer provided food solve that problem, and saves me significant time. If they want some of that saved time? it still seems win win to me.

My employer providing good food makes my food situation almost as good as it would be if I lived in a real city with a good mix of offices and restaurants, and it gives me that without making me leave silicon valley (which has cultural and career conditions that suit me better than I think moving to new york would.)

The upshot is that if I get a job around here that doesn't give me three squares, I've gotta schedule another hour or so of effort into my day; effort that is as hard, for me as work, but where I'm not advancing my career or studying something I want to learn. Yes, my employer benefits a lot from giving me food... but I benefit, too.

[kome]

to be fair, you can do both at the same time. and not only you can, but to achieve the second, you need the first.

[lsc]

Perhaps I am not parsing. I'm reading this as "We should work to increase our wages in order to increase the wages of those who are paid less well"

I think that in a real way, people who create and maintain automation infrastructure are playing a role a lot like the role of management in the economy, except we manage machines that do the job of the worker rather than managing workers. Capital can pay for management to figure out how to pay the old professions to get a job done, or capital can pay us to automate that job away.

[antisthenes]

So why just the techies? Shouldn't you be advocating for everyone to be receiving a larger share of the pie when the company does well?

> I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done.

Oh please. US West coast engineers already have it nearly as good as it can possibly get on this planet, in all of human history. The violin playing for the horrible conditions they must endure is very small if at all existent.

I'd be totally with you if you were advocating for a fairer CEO/Owner vs Worker pay in general, but singling out 'techies' is kind of a disingenuous way to go about it.

[Frondo]

As I said in another comment, there are other groups working to help lower-paid service workers organize. They're better suited to that task than I'd ever be. (And I'm not even a part of any union, I just think we in the tech world are long overdue for organized negotiation.)

And, so, you do agree with me, but don't like some of my word choices? Can you maybe put that stuff aside and see that, organizing and negotiating together in our very individualistic field starts somewhere?

[antisthenes]

Yes, I do agree with you wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, in my own environment, any attempt to organize among workers has fallen upon deaf ears.

The workers themselves seem to be resistant (or perhaps fearful) to organizing in a manner that would give them more rights and fairer compensation.

[Frondo]

Awesome.

And yeah, I think there's a big element of fear to it--fear of losing what is, right now, a pretty sweet deal for a lot of technical folks. That fear isn't entirely misplaced, anyway; individually, any of us could get fired for almost anything at almost any time. And there's a long and storied history of firing folks when they even whisper about organizing.

So I don't think the fear of organizing is irrational--but it is a fear that, I think, should be overcome, because the benefits are, of course, huge.

I dunno, I don't think it's all fear, I just think that's a much larger underlying force than people really want to recognize. If the risk were minimal, why wouldn't people be lining up to do this stuff?

OH, and FYI I am all in on addressing CEO/worker pay disparity. And, while we're at it, on how low-paid workers (janitors, call center stuff, etc.) get outsourced to another corp, etc.

Those are just problems that, I think, would need to be addressed directly through the political system, and not one that workers can take on in an organizing campaign of their own. They're all part of this constellation of "the American worker is getting screwed" but I feel like I gotta pick my battles, at least when I'm posting on the internet.

[elmar]

> Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself.

no need to wait, you can change the sandbox right now, you can create your own startup and give equal ownership to everyone.

[Frondo]

I could do that.

And, at the same time, my fellow techies in any given megacorp (I'm not in one now, used to be long ago) can start organizing and negotiating together, to establish better working conditions, better pay, more autonomy, more of a say in how the company is run.

This isn't an either/or situation.

[elmar]

> I could do that.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

[Frondo]

Right?? Why do you think I'm writing about how much better we could make our working conditions, if we organized and negotiated together?

These ideas and methods aren't new (organizing and negotiating together), and they've been largely effective in this country and elsewhere.

And, hey, like I said to the other person, you don't have to do it, if you're happy with the crumbs the owners toss your way. You do you.

For the rest of us, we don't have to be content with our lot in life--we can be the change we wish to see. Good quote!

[slewis]

Equal ownership of something that’s likely to be zero.

[lsc]

> Equal ownership of something that’s likely to be zero.

I dunno; co-ops have been successful in other areas of endeavor. It's as reasonable a way of organizing a company as any other.

I mean, mostly they are businesses that provide goods and services for money; businesses who's value rests mostly at their profit in a point in time, but it's possible you could come up with a co-op like structure that would work for a tech company where a lot of the value is in the company and getting the company bought out by a larger entity.

I don't know how you'd do it, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't be done.

I can tell you that as a tech worker with options, I would be whole hell of a lot more likely to join a pre-IPO company if they structured the thing in a way that was more transparent and respectful to the workers when it came to the equity component of their compensation.

[hn_throw_1234]

"crumbs"

What field are you in in this industry? I started making more than my parents combined income by 25. This industry pays incredibly well.

Additionally, you're not all addressing any imbalance in impact. "Imbalance" as seen from a perspective of dollars per worker isn't very meaningful unless you advocate for removing incentives and defaulting to a system more reminiscent of communism.

[lsc]

>Additionally, you're not all addressing any imbalance in impact. "Imbalance" as seen from a perspective of dollars per worker isn't very meaningful unless you advocate for removing incentives and defaulting to a system more reminiscent of communism.

I actually... want to point out that there's a lot of disagreement there, at least in the technical field. There are a lot of people who claim that money is mostly a 'hygiene issue' in that you need to pay something in the realm of what your people could get elsewhere or else people will leave, but that actually paying more doesn't make that much difference.

Personally, I think it varies a lot. I know that you can pretty reliably get me to switch jobs by offering me an additional 20%...[1] but I know people in my field who are better than I am, technically, who basically don't ask for raises, and end up making a lot less than I do simply because I ask for more. These people mostly only switch jobs when the situation forces it. And some of those people are brilliant people and incredible workers.

I mean, we're talking on the order of 10 and 20%, not orders of magnitude here, but the point being that the relationship between money and motivation is not as clear cut as it is, say, in sales

[1]Another interesting side is that while you can totally get me to switch jobs by giving me more money, I'm not sure you can get me to do much better at my current gig by offering me more money; I think I'm already in the neighborhood of doing the best I can. But, would this change if my salary stopped going up?

[afterburner]

> I don't care about the imbalance, I care about what I'm getting

Yeah that's how they get you.

[Spivak]

Is that really a problem? If you're making double than what you would make elsewhere then who cares what some random exec is making?

[afterburner]

You could be making triple, or the people below could be making double. Imbalance runs both ways, and encouraging it in either case ends badly for all of us. Why are you surrendering so much power and wealth to the top?

[nathan_f77]

Sometimes I think about starting a tech co-op where every member has an equal stake, and we just build SaaS services and mobile apps or games until something works. I've been doing that by myself, so it would be nice to diversify and get a stake in a number of other projects. Similar to an angel investor who invests in a lot of startups, but we'd be investing time and effort instead of money.

I'm thinking we could have a group of 10 people working on 10+ different projects, and we would each own 10% of the parent company. Then we could try a bunch of different ideas and focus on the ones that work. I would want to build passive "lifestyle businesses" that make 4-5 figures per month, and we wouldn't need to aim for an exit. We could just take a salary and retire, or keep making apps and games because it's a lot of fun.

It would be awesome to share a lot of boilerplate code, so it's super fast to get started on a new idea. We'd also have a single kubernetes cluster on AWS that runs all of the backend services, maybe with something like Deis Workflow. And who knows, maybe we turn that into a business as well, and provide hosting to other companies.

Sorry for the tangent, but that could be one way to solve the imbalance.

Here's another discussion about tech coops: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634152

EDIT: I decided to put together an application form to see if anyone is interested: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dnm-SZxbcKuQ7PUU9ArRnlD1LiK...

There will be a lot of challenges, but I think it could work. Just need to find the right people.

[asmithmd1]

Once you are established, have applicants work long hours for entry level wages as "associates" in the hopes they could become "partner" one day. This is obviously the law firm model. I have also wondered why it hasn't been (to my knowledge) replicated in tech. The cynical answer is that once you have a suite of profitable applications bringing in money, why share that with new employees when you can get the same work done for "crumbs"

[graeme]

Law firm hours are directly tied to revenue. You can't measure things this way in a SAAS shop.

[robocat]

True. But law/accounting is similar to an MLM model, where the rain-makers kinda get paid some proportion of the hours billed of their subordinates.

[labso]

I have been thinking the same idea for a while now. Not in a place that would be able to commit, but if you really try this I would like to follow up.

[bogomipz]

>"I'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago."

I am curious what contributions can a single executive make to a company that justify $34 million dollars in compensation?

More so what contributions did that individual make in less than 6 months that can justify this obscene level of compensation? Did they create 3x or 5x of this compensation in value?

Remember this the next time a recruiter at some startup tries to tell they offer options in lieu of cash because the company wants you "to have skin in the game."

[nnain]

I would guess that he was hired so he can bring in some multi million clients from his network. Such hires can sometimes bring a lot of value to the company or just be a big drain at other times (the more severe effect though can be a dip in motivation for other techies).

[bogomipz]

"Clients"? It's not a customer facing role.

[lsc]

to follow up:

> But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them.

When I interview at pre-ipo companies, they usually tell me how many options they are giving me and a per-option strike price, but no idea of how many outstanding shares there are.

In this case, I think it's deeply irrational to assume that you are getting anything at all; if a professional is offering you something of value as an inducement, they are going to make damn sure you know what that value is.

The upshot is that when you interview at these companies, make them compete for you on salary, benefits and working conditions. If they also want to give you a mystery box, that's cool, but understand that it's a mystery box, and probably won't be worth much at all even if there is an exit.

[dragonwriter]

> When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them.

Well, it'll mostly pay off for major capital holders (which founders are likely but not certain to be, depending on the course of business before then, and top executives at the time may or may not.) Top executives as such (outside of their role, if any, as capital holders) may get more benefit than you, but even if so it will be much less than the capital holders.

[throwaway289348]

For better or worse, I think most of us have made peace with the fact that capital holders can put their money at risk, wait several years, and earn a large return with some probability. For some guy to waltz in a couple months before an IPO and make $35m out of thin air... it's a bit much. Especially when many of us have seen how hard early employees work, staying til late hours and thinking someone will compensate them for their extra effort.

[varenc]

For one data point, Sequoia owns 25% of Dropbox. They led the seed and series A. That investment is going to pay off marvelously...

[beatpanda]

The Techies Are Finally Reading Marx

[gt_]

I doubt it, but a nuanced debate of his ideas on the part of those who purport to be so open to unconventional ideas would be refreshing. We love to promote learning from iteration but still remain amazingly averse to doing so in practice. I think this is just another example of that.

The moonshot of UBI is an acrobatic avoidance of Marx, relatable if you were raised with the American indoctrination of Marx == Hitler (yeah I know but the lack of ideological overlap, or any overlap at all, hasn’t mattered because patriotism). We are due some maturity in this area.

And on another hand, one should be forgiven for mistaking the open source movement for Marxism.

[java_script]

patio11's salary negotiation blog post is our Das Kapital.

[tzhenghao]

My personal opinion on this topic has to do with the skill and requirements of the job, given the time and stage the company is at.

Sure, I'm fine with executives that come much later to be paid more than many that come before him/her. Should a number as high as $34m justify the kind of value he/she puts into the company? I dunno if I can agree with that, and in an early employee's perspective, I'd like to be proven otherwise. Then again, I don't work for Dropbox and do not know the scale of the problem in which this exec has been brought in to solve.

Ultimately, my core principles/values have to do with loyalty and being nice. As founder(s), you must not forget those who brought the company this far. They did unglamorous work and put in crazy hours to help the company achieve product market fit. Founder(s) risk breaking the trust of their employees < no.100 when they see people coming after them being compensated / valued 100x more than they do, not because they are just paid higher. That scale is the root cause for frustration.

The counterpoint to this is when the company scales, all other numbers will scale with it too (revenue numbers, employee headcount etc.), and sometimes hiring a key person who can, in the long term, cut costs by $100m might justify his/her salary. Capitalism works like that.

UPDATE: Curious to hear what thoughts founder(s) active in the HN community have about this though. Open to hear decisions on your end. I struggle to come up with a good answer myself.

[z3t4]

In an early upstart the employees might actually make more money then the founders. When the ship is in motion the founders might not need those people any longer, and there will be many more knocking on the doors wanting a job. The founders hires the execs to hopefully do a better job then the founders themselves are currently doing. And if the founders are making millions it will also be easy for them to pay the execs millions. And they don't want to hire just anyone to take care of their baby.

[ulfw]

This isn't even jealousy speaking, really. I don't even know the gentleman.

But I fail to see how someone would be worth this kind of money as, what's mostly a people manager of a (late) startup.

His own rank and file have to work 30 years to make what he makes in a year. Sorry but ... that makes me want to drop my (paid) Dropbox account.

[matchagaucho]

If there's ever an Equifax scale breach at Dropbox, accountability will fall on the SVP of Eng.

[rrcaptain]

You realize Equifax has had pretty much no consequences for their gross negligence, right?

[matchagaucho]

Execs were forced to resign. Rank and file Engineers were not.

[lotsofpulp]

Once you've made $10M+, why would anyone care if they have to resign? Especially, when odds are they'll have another gig in no time.

[throwaway93192]

Yes, he'd be fired. Perhaps have to testify in front of Congress, even.

Accountability is worth $8M a year?

[adventured]

The average NBA player salary is $6 million per year.

In the next few years all of the NBA players combined (~420 players) are set to make more in salary than all the S&P 500 CEOs earn in salary combined.

Should top executives at $10 billion companies (7x the average value of an NBA team) receive compensation on par with professional athletes? How does that not make sense?

The US will spend $10 billion per year compensating several thousand athletes. How much should be spent compensating the people directly responsible for operating businesses that represent trillions of dollars in GDP and tens of millions of employees?

Mediocre middle relief baseball pitchers should make $8 million per year, but execs running billion dollar companies shouldn't? You can argue that baseball players are overpaid, but that's an absurd premise. It's directly representative of the value in the system - tens of trillions in wealth in the stock market, and vast profit generation - and the price of acquiring talent.

[drieddust]

Executive compensation and performance is negatively correlated.

NBA stars make money by exposing themselves to downside. They have fan, they generate direct revenue and last but not the least they have their skin in the game. One injury and their playing career is over for good. What does these executives bring to table? Can 10 of them alone deliver the product and services to customer?

And when they fail ,they simply take large severance and fade away to a beach only to come back fully rejuvenated to fuck again.

[FireBeyond]

How many of those $10B companies are actually really worth that, not just an inflated result of funding rounds.

The 420 or so players in the NBA can largely be considered to be the best 420 players in the world.

NBA teams also have a pretty high revenue to value ratio.

Points to you too for ignoring that in many cases the salary of a Fortune 500 CEO is, in many to most cases a much smaller fraction of their compensation packages. In many cases bonuses and other compensation is between 3 and 10 or more times the salary, so not exactly equitable, though it makes for a better sound bite.

[cbr]

    How many of those $10B companies are actually really
    worth that, not just an inflated result of funding
    rounds?

The parent is talking about S&P 500 companies, which means publicly traded ones. The thing where private companies have inflated valuations [1][2] doesn't apply here.

[1] https://www.benkuhn.net/terms

[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2955455

[kalleboo]

NBA player salaries are also not sustainable, they're going to have to drop once ESPN will only be able to charge people who actually watch sports instead of getting paid per cable subscriber regardless.

[latch]

So no consequences?

[arbie]

Other than a generous severance package?

[awj]

"accountability", as in a golden parachute and maybe an uncomfortable congressional hearing or two?

Yeah, huge responsibility there...

[austenallred]

You're telling me that executives get paid more than rank-and-file employees? Shocking.

[candiodari]

Well, except of course that startups, like Dropbox, very often advertise to early non-exec hires that while their current pay is very low, they'll make out like bandits upon IPO or acquiring.

Then the shares of the early employees get diluted like crazy to give those sorts of very late-hires ridiculous compensation, because "they're 'executive'".

So the message is more about broken promises than it is about compensation per se.

[stanfordkid]

The guy majored in physics and computer science. There's nothing wrong with compensating people who have proven they can scale things (organizations) commensurate to their record.

[maxaf]

I find it difficult to believe that any sort of scaling of the org could have occurred in the span of six months thanks to the efforts of a single individual.

[ryanburk]

not saying value is right or wrong. but that is the present value of a stock award that vests over time. this is valuing his expected contribution and whatever it took to get him to join versus previous company / other opportunities. to be paid out over 4 years.

[maxaf]

Good point: considering the time frame, the comp does look like a forward looking statement.

[throwaway93192]

Every employee's stock package is forward looking in that same way, no?

[rockinghigh]

Yes. CEOs also often have to hit performance targets in terms of revenues to unlock stock packages.

[stanfordkid]

Presumably the management at Dropbox has no reason to throw away money. He received this on a vesting agreement and has to hit goals to receive it.

He has run several multi-billion dollar units at Microsoft. Likely he had many other opportunities on the table.

Fact is it takes more than code to build something that lasts. You need to know code, understand people that write code, but there is a lot more to it than code. This guy was hired to multiply the efforts of hundreds of coders -- so all he had to do is improve each of them 5% to justify his salary.

[mvc]

All the work has been done already by the suckers who joined 4 years ago but won't get the exec jobs because they're not part of the VC club.

[Kiro]

Where do you see that?

[sb8244]

@ https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467623/000119312518...

[sillysaurus3]

It never was and never will be. We like to pretend that employees are so fairly compensated, and yet I had to fight tooth and nail to get a mere 2% equity. The thought of an equity stake closer to 10% was almost unheard of. But you bet I'd have had an impact large enough to justify those returns, in the sense of http://paulgraham.com/equity.html

Except... It's not quite that simple. Most people don't care. The vast majority of programmers simply do not care enough to band together and force employers to give you a higher stake.

I'm not even insinuating that a union would be a good idea. I'm saying, in a free market society, you can't be surprised to find out you just aren't worth making rich.

[Frondo]

I'm soon moving into management and I still think unions would be a fantastic idea all across the tech sector.

The whole of a business is already a collectively organized unit, by its nature. When each of us, each individual technician, goes into negotiations, we're already up against the entirety of the business. Banding together is literally the only way to balance that scale.

The Screen Actors Guild would be a good model for a tech union--they obviously reward top box office draws richly, but the low end of the scale is still well cared for.

[rdlecler1]

Or you could try to start your own company. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

[throwaway93192]

True, one option for everyone who thinks equity distribution is out of whack, is to start their own company. They can then create an imbalance in their own favor, allocating the lion's share for themselves. Then they can work to convince eager candidates to join their noble mission in exchange for a (razor-thin, shhh) piece of the pie.

Another route would be for founders to expand option pools from the typical 8-12%, so that their own holding didn't exceed that of every employee combined. But of course, why would any founder choose to do that? It's hard to become a billionaire if you let your employees have too much!

[murukesh_s]

That's not always true. It may look easy to start a company and make it at least a moderate success in Silicon Valley today, perhaps due to the easy availability of money and helping mentality from peer companies who would jump into trying your product and even paying for that because they themselves got easy money from cash rich, aggressive investors.

But it is not the case in traditional markets other countries where you have to put lot of time, effort, our own money and mental stress into creating even a moderately successful business.. On the other hand employees get relatively less strain and a stable income and an option to leave the company anytime and move to better higher paying jobs.

[imbur]

If you start your own company you can distribute equity as you see fit

[yeukhon]

Equity is not important for me for the most part. I have to exercise by paying when I leave. I rather get free shares and I’d stay longer. Otherwise, joining a company like FB would be wise if you want stready return on top of your base compensation.

[drieddust]

Business owners form all sort cahoots and lobby for themselves so it's not a free market. Its just sold to us that ways.