[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.