[gsibble]

I've tried to ask dozens of companies that wanted to hire me just for how many shares were outstanding and/or authorized. They almost always refused to share.

You can almost never get any info on equity until it's too late and you realize it's worth nothing.

[georgemcbay]

> I've tried to ask dozens of companies that wanted to hire me just for how many shares were outstanding and/or authorized.

Those questions are certainly worth asking but employees should also keep in mind that even if they do share that information your equity can still later be diluted away to worthlessness.

[mgfist]

There's other gotchas too. Ratchets, liquidation preferences, restructurings (recapitalizations) etc etc

There's many opportunities for VCs and founders to screw you over. And that's assuming things go well enough for that to be an option lol

[dilyevsky]

My 2c is these are almost always a consequence of the company not being a good business. Well, sometimes you get asshole founders/board members too that's not as common as the company just being an absolute money pit. So instead, I'd focus on asking about business fundamentals/strategy - if the company is money printer, everyone is likely going to do well financially

[mikert89]

nope, it happens in "good businesses". once real money is on the line, everything is a dog fight. no one talks publicly because of the reputational repurcussions

[dilyevsky]

not ime. you're also much more likely to get sued for this when real money is involved. cases that i know personally (and myself) either did ok and got pay out or everyone went to zero (below or close to strike price) but founders got secondaries (which screws VCs not the employees).

[mikert89]

seen many many cases first hand in NYC. Also, as an individual its very hard to sue a company with a huge amount of VC funding. you need a 100k to burn on it to even have a basic chance, and most cases are a legal gray area, most lawyers wont even take the case.

even finding a lawyer with the expertise to handle a case like this is not easy, its a very small world among those types of lawyers

[drmath]

> I've tried to ask dozens of companies that wanted to hire me just for how many shares were outstanding and/or authorized.

"Wanted to hire me" as in they made an offer, or an earlier step? At offer stage, I've never had a company refuse to answer these questions. I don't have "dozens of companies" worth of experience though, maybe one dozen if that.

[busterarm]

Every time I hear this I think experiences and expectations are vastly different between SV and the rest of the country. 30ish years of working in New York and I haven't encountered a single company that isn't 100% opaque about their equity to employees until time of exit/IPO. And I keep a large network.

That said, everyone here treats equity of non-public companies as if it's toilet paper. Some of my coworkers got very lucky and very rich when our company went public, but that was also a long time ago now.

[umanwizard]

I worked at one for five years: Materialize. Based in NYC. Everyone knew how many shares they owned, what percentage of the total equity that represented, and what the rights of the preferred share classes were.

[busterarm]

Glad to see this data point. This is a company founded relatively recently and I hope this means that some kind of change is happening regionally.