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by DavidPeiffer 1474 days ago
I could see that working while hiring is exclusively by the founders, but what would be the plan after there are departments with mostly autonomous hiring functions? Would the allocation continue to come from all employees, the manager of that department, or everyone upstream?

It's an interesting concept, but it feels like there would be significant pitfalls any way I think if it.
1 comments
xtracto 1474 days ago
Not only that... there's the issue with stock options already bought: once the employee bought the stock then it wouldnt be possible to take them from her. And when do you "freeze" the stock amount of an employee? When they leave?

There are lots of details that I thought about, and surely many others I didn't. That's why I'm still ruminating the idea in my head, until I feel it is complete enough to apply it.

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peyton 1474 days ago
What you’re describing is already standard practice. You have to shuffle option pools as you hire more people and raise more money.
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xtracto 1474 days ago
No, when I was hired as a 1st engineer at a startup, I was given 2.5% of the shares.

When we hired the next 10 people, the value/% of my shares did not get affected. So, I in a way I, as an IC with 2.5% of shares could push to hire more people to do more of the work I did without any negative direct impact to me (I know the impact comes as the company spends more money, has to raise more and then dilute the value of the stocks in theory, but that's something employees rarely see).

What I want is being able to sit down with say, the team of 10 people in the startup and ask them: Hey, do we REALLY need to hire this 11th person? we all are going to have to give X% of our share of the pie to him. And particularly, when starting the project, the first 5 or 6 should have a sizeable chunk of the pie, and not 2.5% ... ideally, a 1st employee would get to 2.5% once there are about a 100 people in the company (i.e. after hiring the other 97 people)

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dlubarov 1473 days ago
> When we hired the next 10 people, the value/% of my shares did not get affected.

Where did the new hires' shares come from, if not dilution?

They might have come from an option pool, but that just adds a layer of indirection. When the option pool runs low, typically it is replenished with new shares, diluting existing ones.

So I think the dynamic you're describing already exists in most startups.

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peyton 1472 days ago
> Hey, do we REALLY need to hire this 11th person?

This conversation happens when fundraising. Usually the lead wants to see the option pool replenished at the same time.

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