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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I never cease to be amazed at how honest and forthright everyone in the (top tier) of the startup industry is, vs. the entertainment, government contracting, small business, etc. space. To say nothing of finance or politics.

That silicon valley and tech is taking over the world might be a result of this, but in any case, it's better for humanity.

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Are you really suggesting that it's rare for employees to get hosed on options because they don't understand the terms in their contract? Because that's about the closest parallel I can think of. Net points sound like the showbiz equivalent of liquidation preferences. "Oh, no, you don't actually get a percentage of the $50 million sale because there are these investors that have a different kind of stock that says that they get at least a 5x return before you get anything..."

Tech contracts are pretty transparent by comparison.

Aside from value of options (which most people consider to be $0-$20k for the average $100-150k/yr job), all the other benefits of working in tech are straightforward and employee-favorable.

In an early stage startup, you're not likely to see worse than 2x participating, and 1x non is the standard for Series A financings now.

I disagree, look at the options given to Skype employees [1], being in the valley doesn't magically mean that your safe from the dark side of the force.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/26/skypes-worthless-employee-s...

Skype was Private Equity, not normal VC/founder/team terms.

very rarely do founders fuck their employees over, relative to how employees are treated in most places. Founders vs. VCs or Founders vs. PE is more common, but founders at a late-stage company should be a lot more educated and resourced.

It's mainly at the idea to startup to series A stage where people are fairly universally honorable, at least among the top people.

The comments on the "how much did you earn as an early employee from an exit?" thread seem to indicate otherwise. Very few people ever saw their stock options amount to anything.

There are two factors in that thread. First, most companies never achieve a meaningfully successful exit (so those reports will be "my options amounted to nothing" and people will freely share that). Second, in the cases where they did, the employees who did well are somewhat less likely to be reading HN and (I surmise) vastly less likely to talk about it.

I had typed up my experiences over three exits in that thread, posted it and deleted it a few minutes later as it didn't add enough to the discussion relative to what it revealed about me.

You're getting into 'no true scotsman' territory here. Everyone in the film industry is very nice and decent as well, until you run into someone who isn't.

I think there may be less intentionally deceptive, but they make up for it in cluelessness and incompetence.

Founders may not give their employees good deals because they just make stuff up and don't do any analysis.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus...

Like it or not, this is just the way capitalism works. It pays very handsomly to be corrupt, or to be a cartel member in a self-regulated industry. And it will not get better until we move to a new economic paradigm.

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