One final niggly detail
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@stillwater said in One final niggly detail:
I think you should ask for 15k settle for 12k and whine and moan and groan and take 10k. Just cos they tried to pull a fast one on you. Scummy. Very scummy.
I don't think they did. Seems like she really thought I have signed the document and just forgot about it.
Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Seems like she really thought I have signed the document and just forgot about it.
The whole thread is pointless now :(
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@stillwater said in One final niggly detail:
The whole thread is pointless now
Sorry. Let me wipe tears with my THOUSANDS OF FREE EUROS.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
@stillwater said in One final niggly detail:
The whole thread is pointless now
Sorry. Let me wipe tears with my THOUSANDS OF FREE EUROS.
Ah well, I hope you get the money into your account soon instead of "oh this process takes 90 days" bullshit that some companies do.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
- Moral aspect
I will no longer participate in the success or failure of this company. Therefore, if there is any success to be had, the spoils should go to the people who actually make it happen. Not to me.
That's a strange idealistic way of thinking. You earned those shares, they are yours, and that's it.
Plus, with your past work you do participate in success of this company - your influence doesn't stop the moment you leave the building.She gave a range 5K-10K. Not sure why.
Then you start bargaining at 12K. Obviously.
So, I think I'll split the difference and offer to sell my shares for 7500.
It seems to me that you are trying hard to be a decent person here, not come out as arrogant, rude, etc.
Stop that. This kind of attitude is mercilessly exploited by companies/managers. They will talk about ethics, good conduct, ask you to be thankful, whine about bad financial situation, threat with bad opinion on work market, etc. And when you cave in, they'll report savings and cash their yearly bonus.
- Moral aspect
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@mrl said in One final niggly detail:
It seems to me that you are trying hard to be a decent person here, not come out as arrogant, rude, etc.
Stop that. This kind of attitude is mercilessly exploited by companies/managers. They will talk about ethics, good conduct, ask you to be thankful, whine about bad financial situation, threat with bad opinion on work market, etc. And when you cave in, they'll report savings and cash their yearly bonus.Maybe. But I'll feel better about being fair. And I am well enough off that losing those very VERY theoretical 3-4K extra is worth feeling good and guilt free.
Also, if she really wanted to work me, she could have played on my ignorance of all things financial and offer something like 1K euros (which I'd also probably take). So, whatever.
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CEO's gonna CEO.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
@mrl said in One final niggly detail:
It seems to me that you are trying hard to be a decent person here, not come out as arrogant, rude, etc.
Stop that. This kind of attitude is mercilessly exploited by companies/managers. They will talk about ethics, good conduct, ask you to be thankful, whine about bad financial situation, threat with bad opinion on work market, etc. And when you cave in, they'll report savings and cash their yearly bonus.Maybe. But I'll feel better about being fair. And I am well enough off that losing those very VERY theoretical 3-4K extra is worth feeling good and guilt free.
Where is this guilt coming from? They already admitted they owe you money.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
CEO's gonna CEO.
Oh god I hope you did not say yes to that.
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@mrl said in One final niggly detail:
Where is this guilt coming from? They already admitted they owe you money.
If she really wanted to give me these shares under the refund clause and just forgot (which I believe to be the case, but am not 100% certain), then I am in this situation accidentally. Kind of like if you find a wallet, then expect a big fee for returning it.
At least it feels a bit like that.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Kind of like if you find a wallet
Except that it is your wallet?
@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
But I'll feel better about being fair.
You would be unfair if you said give me 20k euros and then the shares too. And the likelihood she is being fair when she says she'll give you 5k is pretttttty fucking slim.
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@stillwater said in One final niggly detail:
Oh god I hope you did not say yes to that.
I am still trying to find a good way to craft a "no" reply.
She's at a big advantage here, as she does this kind of thing all the time, and all I want it to be over so I can move on with my life. Makes me wonder how high could a real negotiator push the price.
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@mrl said in One final niggly detail:
This kind of attitude is mercilessly exploited by companies/managers. They will talk about ethics, good conduct, ask you to be thankful, whine about bad financial situation, threat with bad opinion on work market, etc. And when you cave in, they'll report savings and cash their yearly bonus.
THIS. SO MUCH THIS. SOOOOOOO MUCH THIS!
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
@stillwater said in One final niggly detail:
Oh god I hope you did not say yes to that.
I am still trying to find a good way to craft a "no" reply.
She's at a big advantage here, as she does this kind of thing all the time, and all I want it to be over so I can move on with my life. Makes me wonder how high could a real negotiator push the price.
You could start with the good old "How am i supposed to do that?" or "I really appreciate you coming up with that figure but I'm sorry I really could not go that low". Figure out ways to say No without saying No I guess but don't cave in and get less money than what you're actually owed.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
I am still trying to find a good way to craft a "no" reply.
Received this.
I guess all I had to do was wait. Even she must have thought that was a transparent ploy.
Good enough for me.
Now to figure out how to do this without an escrow or something...
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
and all I want it to be over so I can move on with my life.
Her knowing you're probably feeling like this is something she'd be more than willing to exploit.
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@stillwater said in One final niggly detail:
Her knowing you're probably feeling like this is something she'd be more than willing to exploit.
Surprisingly, I don't think so.
I think she's so deeply surrounded with business people and wrapped in her CEO world, she didn't even consider us nerds have no idea how to negotiate and that she could have played me like a violin here.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
I guess all I had to do was wait. Even she must have thought that was a transparent ploy.
Good enough for me.You're getting your 10k? Case closed.
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@stillwater said in One final niggly detail:
Good enough for me.
You're getting your 10k? Case closed.
7.5K.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Now to figure out how to do this without an escrow or something...
She's gonna send me some formal letter, offering the $$$ as exit bonus. According to my vast legal know-how, this is how you do it, I guess.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Now to figure out how to do this without an escrow or something...
She's gonna send me some formal letter, offering the $$$ as exit bonus. According to my vast legal know-how, this is how you do it, I guess.
Aaand done. I'm glad that was over, but I'll be really glad once the money is in the bank.
Also, now I really hope they don't succeed and become millionaires. :)
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Also, now I really hope they don't succeed and become millionaires
Isn't this the back story to Breaking Bad? Don't get lung cancer dude
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@jaloopa said in One final niggly detail:
@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Also, now I really hope they don't succeed and become millionaires
Isn't this the back story to Breaking Bad? Don't get lung cancer dude
But think of the mettle threads that would generate
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Also, now I really hope they don't succeed and become millionaires.
With the likely skill level of your un-mettled replacement…
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@dkf said in One final niggly detail:
With the likely skill level of your un-mettled replacement…
Replacement isn't even in sight yet. The Indian guy they flew in to "take over" flew back after learning absolutely nothing and demonstrating zero ability to do my job. There is some recruiter for hire hunting people through LinkedIn, but with everything else in chaos, there's little chance of them actually bringing anyone good in.
So yeah...
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I am late to the party, but I think you did the right thing @cartman82. You likely could have gotten a little bit more, but in reality those shares are essentially worthless right now. At some point in the future if they go public they could be valued but from the sounds of it they currently are not.
They fucked up. They should have written in the shareholder agreement that shareholders are required to be employees of the company. That is SOP for closely held companies like that. It also keeps shit like this from happening. It also keeps a partner from getting a divorce and all of a sudden the company has a new partner who is pissed off because one of the other partners was screwing his secretary. They also should have written in some way to value those shares if a person leaves the company and they are forced to surrender their shares. Had they done that they could have paid you a lot less for them.
But they apparently did none of that, so they offered you a decent chunk in order to clear this up because any further capital raises or investors brought on they would be required to disclose this to. This is not something that investors want to see. Loose ends like this make investors wary.
"Oh yeah, one more thing, this Serbian guy that worked for us a few years ago also has 100 shares of our stock. We haven't spoken with him in years...and we stole a laptop from him."
"Yeah...we don't like wildcards like that hanging out there. We will take our money elsewhere."So they fucked up and they paid you 7500 Britbucks for their screwup. Which is likely way more than they would have had to pay you if they had all their ducks in a row and did some fucking paperwork before they started handing out shares like they were toilet paper. They learned a valuable lesson and you charged them for teaching it to them. Win-win.
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@polygeekery said in One final niggly detail:
fucked up. They should have written in the shareholder agreement that shareholders are required to be employees of the company. That is SOP for closely held companies like that.
Or "withhold Y% of type X shares to be distributed pro-rata amongst current employees if/when the company floats"
Then some time down the line issue some type Z shares that revalue the type X at 0.001% of their original value.
I think. Might have happened to me. Couldn't possibly say. Might even be able to find the LinkedIn post where someone lost a CAD or few where he'd put real money in.
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@pjh there is a reason why early stage investors always value their investments as percentage of equity and not number of shares. You can do a lot of fuckery with share valuation in the early days when those shares have no value. If you invest $4M for 18% that 18% doesn't change for them.
That is also all the more reason that I think @cartman82 did the right thing. In fact, he basically made out like a bandit as compared to how it could have gone down. I think that for them it was worth the 7500 just to not have to fuck with it anymore.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
But I did buy a laptop with my own money, that I gave to the company (when they needed it pronto). And they still haven't refunded that.
If they don't refund it, just take it with you. It's yours.
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@polygeekery said in One final niggly detail:
But they apparently did none of that, so they offered you a decent chunk in order to clear this up because any further capital raises or investors brought on they would be required to disclose this to. This is not something that investors want to see. Loose ends like this make investors wary.
"Oh yeah, one more thing, this Serbian guy that worked for us a few years ago also has 100 shares of our stock. We haven't spoken with him in years...and we stole a laptop from him."
"Yeah...we don't like wildcards like that hanging out there. We will take our money elsewhere."Interesting. I didn't even consider the investor angle.
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
Interesting. I didn't even consider the investor angle.
Yep. One of the very first questions that a potential investor will ask is "Who are the shareholders?" or "Who are the equity holders?" or some manner of similar question. Here in the USA they would be required to divulge that some shares were held by an ex-employee and they were not able to recover them upon your leaving. That would be a serious red flag for any investor.
Investors like risk, that is how you make money. What they do not like is uncertainty and your shares would have been exactly that.
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@boomzilla said in One final niggly detail:
Honestly, getting anything for them sounds like a huge win for you.
The cheap move from them would be to let you keep the shares, then make that share class useless. (Although maybe they've done the math and doing the paperwork for making a new share class would be more expensive than just paying you $10k, hard to say.)
So if they're offering cash money, I'd take it personally. The shares right now can't be valued in any case.
And this post is way obsolete because you Euro-people apparently made 57,000 posts at like 3 AM. Bah.
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@cartman82 Exit bonus? That should have been a sale contract. I don’t know how taxes work in Cartmanistan, but that money should be long term capital gains, not regular income.
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@greybeard said in One final niggly detail:
@cartman82 Exit bonus? That should have been a sale contract. I don’t know how taxes work in Cartmanistan, but that money should be long term capital gains, not regular income.
Yeah, I am gonna get raked on taxes. I'm sure there is a better way to execute this, but whatever.
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@greybeard said in One final niggly detail:
@cartman82 Exit bonus? That should have been a sale contract. I don’t know how taxes work in Cartmanistan, but that money should be long term capital gains, not regular income.
There is probably a reason for that which explains it. Remember when she said:
Notice that range. It is from X to 2X. As an educated guess I think I know why this is. I am basing it on this:
...and this:
Educated guess time: She can personally approve any expenditure up to £5,000 without having to go to anyone else for approval. Anything above that amount she has to go to the board or angel investors or someone above her to get it approved. I am also assuming that she does not have the authority to do anything herself which regards to stock and such. By framing it as an "exit bonus" she bypasses all of that.
But wait, you said she could personally approve up to £5,000, why did she say up to £10,000? That makes no sense!
Patience grasshoppa. I bet if we asked @cartman82 if she was the type of woman who knows how to play office politics he would say yes. She knows how to play games. When you see a range where the upper end is exactly double the lower range you can usually assume that there is the following fuckery going on.
She is using herself as a conduit for an additional £5,000 if she needs it. She can authorize any amount up to £5,000, so she does two. One framed as a loan to the company, as she said in the email. So £5,000 is coming straight to @cartman82 and the additional £2,500 is basically run through her as a liability for the company which they will then pay back to her as another transaction below the approval limit. No approvals needed and she gets to keep all this quiet.
If you are thinking this sounds crooked, well it absolutely is but it happens much more than you would think. You can also use knowledge of this to structure deals to make sales easier to close, without actually engaging in Enron accounting tricks. If anyone is interested I can explain how.
But yeah, when you see a big wig say they can offer a range from X to 2X, the safe money is on something like this happening. I can also bet that @cartman82's former coworkers will be getting an addition to the employee handbook in a week or so.
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@polygeekery said in One final niggly detail:
You can also use knowledge of this to structure deals to make sales easier to close, without actually engaging in Enron accounting tricks. If anyone is interested I can explain how.
Please don't give away all the secrets and spoil the fun [profit is fun!]
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@polygeekery Hmm. She is CEO and the biggest share holder. So I presume she has pretty much free reign over finances and everything else.
I could see her trying to hide this "screwup" by splitting the amount so it fits within her discretionary spending budget. But why would she tell that to me? If her discretionary budget is $5000, why not tell me "I can give you 3-4 K" or something?
Hey, maybe she just really appreciated all my hard work and just wanted to reward me for quitting with this totally standard exit bonus.
I guess, we'll never know. ¯\(ツ)/¯
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@cartman82 said in One final niggly detail:
I guess, we'll never know. ¯(ツ)/¯
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If it is paid as two transactions we may know. ;)
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