[thrwwyoverpaid]

Upper management pay, oof. I am at a company that went public. I was a very early employee working on the core product as a developer for the better part of a decade. I got a very nice payout (a bit over 1 million before taxes). The head of HR joined several months prior to our IPO and made over 8x what I did in equity. Like, wtf.... I can't complain as I won some start up lotto money, but, man, this head of HR _really_ lucked the f*ck out.

[rayvy]

Any more details (that you're willing to share) on this? You mentioned they're only the "Head of HR", but you say you were a core product dev (senior by the timeline you give). Did you accept underpay because you were early? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around an 8-month "Head of HR" making out significantly better than a (first 20?) Sr Product dev (not questioning your story though).

[jonathankoren]

I'm thinking the number of options just weren't there.

[mixmastamyk]

Yes, what about vesting?

[nopzor]

many companies have instant acceleration on change of control, with regard to the vesting point.

[techslave]

never ever heard of this for IPO

[munk-a]

This is at least pretty common in Canada, options are set to vest on a schedule but all future agreed upon options will vest if the company is sold/goes public/what have you.