

Percentages for New Hires... - far33d

Engineer, 5 years experience. Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field. What option percentage should this engineer expect? 
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cperciva
It depends.

A company such as you describe ("Product close to launch, series A finished,
in a specialized field") might have 20 engineers building the project; or it
might have 3 people and several million dollars of hardware. Obviously in the
later case a new employee would make a greater impact on the company and thus
be able to demand more options.

An engineer such as you describe ("engineer, 5 years experience") might be a
23 year old who got an entry-level programming job straight out of high school
and has no particular expertise; or he might have a PhD and be a world-
recognized expert in the particular specialized field in which the company is
working. Obviously in the later case he would be able to demand more options.

All I can say with confidence based on the information given is that he should
probably expect somewhere between 0.01% and 25%.

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far33d
Ok.. let's say the person falls in the middle of all your described ranges.
Less than 10 engineers, not a phd, not a high school kid, but experience is
specific to what they are working on.

Obviously, that person wouldn't fall in the middle of your options range (12%
is really high).

~~~
ph0rque
hmmm... how about a logarithmic mean? This comes out to 0.5% (log10).

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theremora
a tenth of a percent .001 to a quarter of a percent .0025 at best.

~~~
far33d
The venturehacks site has slightly higher numbers...

[http://www.venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-
shuffle#mar...](http://www.venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-
shuffle#market)

~~~
theremora
sorry to split hairs but 5 is less than 5+ so they say Manager or Junior
Engineer 0.2 - 0.33

with the top range being for proven elite contributors.

going into the deal everyone has to receive similar stock offers, but after
you prove yourself, the standouts can double or more, what the original grant
was.

