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Comment by jamiequint | Hacker News Reader

This piece is inane and I'm surprised to see it published by A16Z.

Options are a form of compensation, it's not as if the value created by the early employee goes away if they leave before a liquidity event. They created value and got compensated for it. To call the process of making it easier for departed employees to actually get access to this part of their compensation "optimizing for former employees at the expense of current employees" is disingenuous. If it were somehow possible to claw-back the salary of former employees to pay for the salary of current employees would A16Z actually support that with a straight face? I don't see how this is any different. This whole piece is hopelessly amoral.

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> it's not as if the value created by the early employee goes away if they leave before a liquidity event.

Exactly. The comparison with a football player is asinine. A player who no longer is on the team cannot contribute to winning a football game. But an employee builds something that persists and is built upon long after they're gone.

It's basically admitting that their main protection against dilution is fucking over previous employees

And how are previous employees "dead equity" but not andreeson ?

Strongly agree.

I also don't understand why the company acts as if the employee has no cash liquidity once those 90 days start ticking - can't the employee sell their stock on the secondary market? Companies like EquityZen, or 137 Ventures can do this entirely without company involvement in the form of transferring shares, by doing a derivative forward contract, or a loan for instance. That way, the employee wouldn't need to lose all their options, only sell enough to pay for the AMT and legal fees.

Sure, companies have worded in hidden and possibly completely unenforceable share restrictions on transfers, loans, or anything remotely involving equity. But until we have a court case and a TechCrunch headline of Company suing Employee over Secondary Transaction, how does one know if these are enforceable or not?

And practically speaking, how will the company find out if you made a deal with your rich uncle? With an angel investor? With a group of angels? With these companies? What is the practical difference?

https://gist.github.com/jdmaturen/5830b83c1425c4767f7e1bd4c9...

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