[LRUG] Equity/Stock/Share Options: Survey

[Louis Goff-Beardsley]

Hi Sam,

My experience with companies offering equity etc in companies as part of a package are as follows:


·         Regularly get companies asking me I can market mid & senior developer positions with a below market rate salaries but with significant equity. Usually its companies at a fairly early stage that are interested in this sort of proposition. Rarely do these roles get filled with this sort of package. Reasons for this are:

o   The £10k-30k that developers would lose essentially would result in a significant drop in immediate lifestyle.

o   The chance of a payoff with the equity being worth something is pretty risky, with more tech start-ups failing than succeeding.

o   Most Upper-mid and above developers will usually have picked-up various bits of equity from all over the place throughout their career, often can be jaded about its value. Only a few times I’ve met developers who took equity and it paid off.

§  That being said I’ve met a few developers where its paid off and they’ve used that money to bankroll their own projects.

·         When a company is offering market Salary rates + equity as part of total package it’s a lot more easy to market them. Often it can be the deciding factor when candidates are choosing between roles.

o   Obviously people are more included to stay with the company longer due to the Vesting/Cliff structure.

o   Good way of getting employees to care about and feel invested in the success of the business.

To summarise:  Most people wouldn’t like to spend a significant portion of my wages on scratch cards, but would be attracted to them if given on top of a regular salary.

Best, Louis.

-
Louis Goff-Beardsley
Ultra-specialised Independent Ruby Recruìtment
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From: Chat [mailto:chat-bounces at lists.lrug.org] On Behalf Of Sam Phillips
Sent: 02 August 2014 12:01
To: London Ruby Users Group
Subject: [LRUG] Equity/Stock/Share Options: Survey

Hi LRUG,

I've had a few anecdotal conversations about equity (option) schemes over the past few years and the way that they work in practice with real people in real companies where relationships are sometimes complex.

I'm not so much thinking about whether or not these schemes are a good idea or worth sacrificing salary for.

I'm hoping to come up with a more definitive view on what's going on so have put together a simple survey. If you are part of a company option scheme, or have been in the past, and could spend 2 minutes (it's 10 quick questions) on it, that would awesome.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MFFGZSH

My motivation is to see if there are are trends in the way things are happening and to allow us to share our experiences. My (broad) hypothesis is that implementation of these schemes in practice is inconsistent across companies. My detailed hypothesis I'll reveal when I have some data :)

I'll be sharing anonymised raw data (providing I actually get some, and participants agree), and will hopefully be able to break this down with some basic analysis too.

As a few of you know, I'm not a statistician, so this is not very scientific! Any feedback on how to better collect this sort of data is happily received although I'll probably not want to change the questions half way through the sample period (again, you can tell me different if I'm wrong!).

My aim right now is simply to get more data, learn more about what's going on, and to maybe start an open conversation on the topic.

If you could take two minutes, that would be ace. Thank you so much!

Sam
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