throwaway93192

I made the assumption that the new startup would be in tech, in which case it almost certainly overlaps with his FANG employer.

The typical HN answer is "yes, and start a new company", but I think there's a lot to be said for "yes, and work remotely for the company you're at." It's probably not too difficult to swing, you'll get to enjoy life instead of panicking at your struggling new venture in a new town, and you'll be able to take advantage of all the experience you've gathered at current company.

Honestly, I don't know if I'm giving you advice or myself.

At many companies, including all FANG-like companies, you can't start a business on the side. Your employer may claim ownership and you can be fired for breaking your employment contract.

Parent and long-time ex-googler. I'm baffled that the original YT Kids was not whitelisted, and in fact I uninstalled it from my little one's ipads a long time ago. They were watching a Trolls (Dreamworks) animation, and I thought "boy, the writing on this isn't very good, but whatever". Then the plot started to become kinda bizarre and I realized it was a fake. As a user, I felt duped by YT Kids, who had promised me a window into the internet I can safely hand over to my <6-year olds. But really, it's just random people around the world uploading junk.

As an ex-googler who saw the way some (a few) PMs made decisions with their own Impact (aka career) in mind, I can cynically imagine them choosing the algorithmic method because at Google you must scale, and you get promoted by launching a cool machine learning product and not a product with <200 channels that were hand-selected (that's boring!). But as a parent all I wanted was just a few channels. Some disney, some science, etc.

Yes, he'd be fired. Perhaps have to testify in front of Congress, even.

Accountability is worth $8M a year?

True, one option for everyone who thinks equity distribution is out of whack, is to start their own company. They can then create an imbalance in their own favor, allocating the lion's share for themselves. Then they can work to convince eager candidates to join their noble mission in exchange for a (razor-thin, shhh) piece of the pie.

Another route would be for founders to expand option pools from the typical 8-12%, so that their own holding didn't exceed that of every employee combined. But of course, why would any founder choose to do that? It's hard to become a billionaire if you let your employees have too much!

Every employee's stock package is forward looking in that same way, no?

I'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago.

For all employees that are considering joining a startup as rank-and-file engineers and putting in years of effort, remember that your compensation will be paltry compared to founders and top execs. When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them.

Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them.