

Ask HN: How were you screwed over on stock options? - rwmj

The previous item: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9145126 has an interesting discussion of stock option terms, and it turns out a lot of people have been screwed over on stock options in one way or another.  What way did a start-up prevent you from gaining from promised stock options?
======
UserUnseen
Last year, Avago sold the flash drive business (SandForce) it acquired as part
of LSI to Seagate. Seagate did not honor existing options. Some employees were
offered bonus plans with payments over 2 years and RSUs over 4 years that
totalled less than their options were worth. The kicker is that many
oldtimers, those options were due to fully vest in about 1 year or less.

------
general_failure
I haven't been prevented but I found that most startups even in the valley
want to give you peanuts in terms of stocks and in fact many of them are now
calling this 'industry' standard.

This is a major ploy and most developers appear to fall for this. The founder
sells them a vision of a billion dollar company and gives the 0.01% in
exchange when they are employee no. 10.

