You take Pincus and company, tie their fates to that of the employees, and everyone loses together? Fine, whatever. Like you said, they played the lottery. But the mismatch of fates is, to me, what makes this story pretty damn sad.

A woman in China had an unnecessary, experimental operation done at a hospital, without her consent. It caused kidney failure, and she needed a transplant.

There was a match with a family member, but the hospital refused to pay for it, even though it could have been sued into bankruptcy in the US. For the want of $7,000 USD, she was dying.

Watching her sit with her young children on her lap, deathly sick with her husband by her side, the expression of finality and despair on their faces - I'm not ashamed to admit that it made me tear up.

Now that, to me, is god damn heartbreaking. I don't disagree with the direction of your sentiment, just the magnitude of the word you are using. It's close to the strongest feelings you can have on a subject. Did you really feel a pang in your heart when you read the article?

Because to me, those two stories aren't even on the same planet.

By this stupid logic, you can never be happy, because there's always someone with more reasons to be happy, while the victims of a serial killer probably had it better off than a child who dies of starvation in Africa.

(Of course, you're a smart person, so I'm sure you're aware of how stupid this line of arguing is.)

You seem to be pretty strongly in support of someone who by all means cheated his employees. If that's the case, I certainly hope future employees have the foresight to do some research on who you are before agreeing to work for you.

Your tone on other hand is combative and patronizing. The HN guidelines say "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names," and "Be civil."

I tend to agree with reitzensteinm that we in Silicon Valley should remember how good we have it compared to the rest of the world. Our fortune comes not only from hard work and talent, but from being born in the right decade in a prosperous country.

I didn't because every time I went over it and sliced it, there was too much scope to misunderstand what was said.

But there were 2 aspects that I knew were triggers -

1) His underlying assumption that the employees were there for playing the "startup lottery". Firstly this ascribes knowledge of the mind set of the emps. Secondly this ignores the fact that Zynga also was a "safer" firm given its history and at the time, certain prospects.

The employees for that firm which are hurting today aren't necessarily the same as your first batch or second batch hires in an untested startup.

(this is why I didn't comment - there are many ways to slice and dice this further, and suffer from badly drawn edges and subsets)

2) His description of it as startup lottery. The underlying philosophy here on HN, and in most places which discuss startups is strongly merit oriented. His statement carried the implication that all the discussions so far were eye wash - it was a lottery and people lost, bad luck.

His later clarifications were pretty crucial to explain his context, but I can completely see where he ticked people off.

Your assertion that I support cheating employees just because I didn't explicitly say otherwise is quite insulting, and it's what makes me feel the need to reply to you. I think the deal they got it shitty, and I certainly wouldn't start taking money off the table before my employees could.

I think you're reading an attitude into my comments that just isn't there. I suggest we continue this conversation by email, to avoid polluting HN with what will no doubt be a long thread - mine is in my profile if you'd like to.

>some Silicon Valley developers, one of the highest paid professions in one of the highest paid areas of the world, only made a decent salary instead of a fantastic total compensation package?

The relevance of the integrity of the managers to the ways people make decisions that determine the course of their lives is not something to be taken lightly. This applies even if the consequences themselves do not appear to be so dire. There is a distinctly painful feeling that comes along with devoting your life to someone who abuses that. For those familiar with this perception, the idea that you could ignore it is preposterous. From your perspective, whatever it may be, it could beyond your imagination and experience.

You might say this:

>Is it really 'heartbreaking' when someone's 17-year-old cat dies? It's a normal and expected outcome; plus, not only were they lucky enough to afford a pet and keep it in good health, the animal itself hasn't lost much, considering it's limited cognitive capacity.

And yet anyone who has been through or even near this situation would find the argument to be incredibly callous, because the formation of human emotion has so much more to it than simply evaluating one's present situation.

I understand the sentiment that perhaps nobody is entitled to a fantastically large amount of money and that people living what we call the good life are a small minority in the world. However, that just isn't the story here.

Connections between humans are what make society possible. It's reasonable to care when they are abused.

It was not meant to be a comment on how it feels today, or to suggest that we shouldn't feel empathy for them because of their future position.

I just meant that in a few years they'll look back on this and laugh, which makes it story much less sad. Do you disagree with that?

Look, I'm coming from the perspective of an outsider. OP seemed to suggest it is heartbreaking to read about Zynga, which is what I was responding to. If one of my close friends was working there, I would absolutely feel a different way.

Similarly, if I read about a kid's cat dying on the internet, it might just make me feel a bit down. When my dog died, heartbroken was exactly how I felt.

Well, okay, maybe some of them might have been under a lot of stress and that might affect their personal life and even health or life expectancy.

Maybe some of the talented people who might have a fantastic career ahead of them won't recover and become jaded or leave the industry altogether.

Maybe none of that is heartbreaking, strictly said. It's "highly unfortunate" or "really sad", perhaps.

What really grates is your decision to nitpick about the choice of words because you saw something that was even sadder on TV.

I think it's very hard to define exactly where your slippery slope of perspective begins and ends. Bottom line is that greater injustice is never an excuse for injustice. Neither are acceptable.

I have no comment on the issue, I just wanted to point out a terminology confusion.

Without the straw man, reductio ad absurdum alone is just a tool, not a fallacy, as you say.

Couldn't find some more official name for the "The "Children Are Starving In Africa!" argument.

Anyone willing to help out?

"Of course, when I were a lad, we had it tough..."

EDIT: Maybe I should add I am currently in Asia. Many people here probably work harder then the people at Zygna and receive less compensation.

Using overly emphatic words for not so cruel-bad situations is a bad thing, since you will be at loss for words when something worse happen. That's just a sign of lack of culture. I am not talking about the person who said "heartbreaking" in the first place, just a general observation as to what language is changing into these days.

It wasn't like Zyanga kept them working while they were starving and kept them lured all along that they will be fed once Zynga stock booms up.

They always had the chance to jump ship. Esp. with many small/big ships steadily floating around ready to lift them aboard. It was a gamble for the extra cash (read bonanza) and they lost (just the bonanza).

You don't think Elvis was taking his economic privilege into account when he wrote "Heartbreak Hotel"? Maybe he should have called it "Momentary Romantic Setback Hotel". Or maybe the word "heartbreaking" should be reserved for citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, all things considered, things are considerably more dire.

"The National Adjective Council must regrettably inform you that your first world documentary viewing experience was merely 'disheartening'."

That the CEO cashed out before has nothing to do with that fact.

And with

"Pincus has a track record now of big IPO train wrecks. He founded Support.com and took it public for $14 a share during the first Internet bubble in 2000. The stock zoomed up by 133% in its first day of trading. It changed hands for more than $30 per share before tanking below $5 in 2001."

they might have should known what was comming.

Yes they make a mistake. That mistake is to bet on an unethical business man. The point is not that, the point is the CEO set different conditions for him and different for others.

While the senior execs were allowed to cash out, guys down the ladder weren't.

How does the fact that senior execs cashed out relate to the fact that they don't get rich b/c their company has no sustainable business model and the stock crashed?

I mean, if the CEO told everyone up front about the tactics he was going to use to allow him to cash out early that also prevented everyone else from doing the same at the same time and also that the future of the company was all downhill; then maybe you have a point.

Maybe saying they were cheated is a better phrase for you?

If you don't agree that that's fine. Which, by the way, I have a bridge for sale you might be interested in...

If we're talking about pay structure and access to the executive washroom, then no.

If we're talking about employees and the CEO having equity in the same company but the CEO can cash his equity any time he feels like it while the employees cannot then there's a problem. Especially when said CEO seems to be doing questionable things to pump up the value of his stock that later collapses so that when employees finally can get money there's no money to be had.

I find it disturbing that you seem to think there's nothing wrong in this situation. There's no way you can say that the actions and behaviors of this CEO and company are the norm. If you don't understand that at this point then I'm unable to explain it to you. In this case we'll just leave it with you have your opinion and I have mine.

And the reason they've lost their "money" is not because of the CEO having different rules.

But didn't hold the employees to have the same right.

Which actually speaks a lot about the intentions of those senior execs, which is clearly to play a hit and run game.

If you're in America, have $0, can't pay rent, can't buy food for your kids; the fact that kids in Africa are dying from some non-1st world disease is completely irrelevant to the pains you're having.

It's a completely different thing for an impartial third party to say person X's pain is more than person Y's pans (that's relative to the observer).

We put far too much emphasis on prolonging life and not enough on quality of life. I have no clue who this lady was or what her background was, but $7k goes a long ways in China. Imagine if she could have instead guaranteed a solid education for every one of her children.

We spend a ton of money on end of life care that could do much more good spent elsewhere. Which would you rather have- $50k in end of life care or a free college education?

Kidney failure and a transplant, chances that the transplant doesn't work, complications following it, issues remaining for the rest of her life, etc. It's not all roses and medicine isn't as magic as it is in the movies.

I hope they did get the woman the U$ 7.000.

Sadly, there are stories much like that, or worse, every single day. My SO works for the state child care agency here in Uruguay, now that's a thankless job if there is one. She gets to see the worst of human beings (child rape, uncaring mothers, a mother putting her 12 year old girl into prostitution), fortunately balanced by a little of the best too (kindhearted adoptive mothers for example, and lots of supportive people).

More likely, they shut off the cameras, thank the people, and then fly away, shaking their heads that such a tragedy could occur.

Decide.com in 1999 - they farked over the employees and diluted the stock of everyone hoping to cash out in an acquisition - this caused a major meltdown and the company fell apart and nobody received anything.

Savi Technology was acquired by Lockheed - they stated an option price internally which was wildly wrong, granted many many many options to execs and came out and said that anyone who joined in the last 12 months had options worth zero. People who did have common shares got farked over, newer employees even worse. and all employees got ZERO equity in lockheed.

Then Lockheed stock tripled after the acquisition due to the War on Humanity and everyone was still stuck holding the bag.

This is just two direct examples.

Most companies will fuck over their employees. I don't trust ANYONE in the valley.

But don't fret, if (when) Zynga does collapse, it's execs (including the founder, who I hear is a piece of work) will be up to their eyeballs in lawsuits. Ahh the fun, writing checks to your lawyers.

This is a pretty common story. Probably more common than when the options pay anything. I once worked for a company that acquired another company. We were bigger, our CEO set up the deal, their CEO got paid, etc. But officially it was a "merger of equals". Why? Because if we'd bought them their options would have vested immediately and we would have had to buy up all the stock the employees held.

The way it was worked my company traded their options for options in the new company. Two years later everyone who had worked for the company we acquired was out of a job, and they had to decide whether or not to exercise their options in a company that wasn't publicly traded (which is madness, BTW - never, ever do that). I would have bought one of those mirrors on a stick and checked under my car every day if I'd been the CEO. But eventually he cashed out for a cool $15m.

Given how litigious the US is, if I were super rich I could not imagine keeping a significant portion of my assets in the country. If you have a lot of money it makes a lot of sense to not only diversify your investments but your jurisdictional exposure as well.

If you know the lawsuits are going to take forever (time) and cost a bunch (money), not having many assets in the US makes it easy to accept a default judgement, declare bankruptcy and write off the loss entirely without ever paying any lawyers a cent.

In this case, the people being sued seem like they totally deserve a lawsuit, but that doesn't change the fact that it is naive to not diversify jurisdictionally.

You don't even need to be wealthy. The US no longer has the rule of law, so you can now be stripped of your possessions even if you are _accused_ of a crime:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#The_trend_towa...

I know an employee #3 at a successful startup who was fired two weeks before he would have vested. He got his due but only after legal action.

Turns out, though, that the founder was funding payroll out of his own pocket for the last couple of months. Subsequent datapoints suggest he's a good (if occasionally odd) egg.

Trust in the Valley is a very scarce commodity, but it can be found.

Zynga? I have to say I saw it coming from miles away.

It is really a problem. People have simply been conditioned to think it is normal. it may be "normal" but it is farked and wrong.

Which is heartbreaking in itself, on top of the bloody mine crushing on him.

You say it like this argument somehow makes the Zynga case more heartbreaking, instead of less...

>I never really like these comparison though because why is a ditch digger better or worse than a computer programmer? Both hold basically the same desires. Why should one's misfortune be less important than another? They both work just as hard?

No, they don't. And they don't get the same compensation either. Or job satisfaction -- the ditch digger pretty much works that job because he has to support himself / his family and he doesn't have the means to get something different. The computer programmer could have been 10 other things if he wanted, from tech support to floor manager at a Costco.

Really, try ditch digging for a year, and then we'll talk.

And gambling on equity when you get paid well over average with all the options you have for your future is not that bad all considered.

What's that? Is it like "First perform at the Opera House and then we'll talk Mozart"?

Most of the times they do not have same desires. For whatever reasons. Be it the immediate need to support family or the ambition the fire of desire having been lost over the years or fight and struggle to look for a stable mean to live. Or maybe the kind of education/upbringing he received. Or the company he grew up with (well, this is very important). This is also has a lot to do with the genes you were born with.

This is the nature of a capitalist society and other ones are even worse. In a capitalist people are supposed to be of uneven means so they are. In a society like communist societies people are not supposed to be of uneven means (in the usual sense) and still they are and the gap is a lot wider than that in the former society.

Now, this is heartbreaking. Given the fact that most probably not having superior education (or education at all) didn't have anything to do with neglecting studies but simply being born to poor parents.

>why is a ditch digger better or worse than a computer programmer?

It's the society we live in. There are various places on this planet where you are an untouchable by caste the caste you were born in leave alone money and job.

How is that different from 99% of jobs out there? People flipping burgers work crazy shifts with shitty compensation only to watch the franchise owners getting filthy rich.

If you get a minimum wage job, you know what the deal is. If you get equity, it's reasonable to expect that you won't get screwed over completely.

Is it fair? That's a very different question.

This usually happens if your option has a strike price lower than the market price at the time they're issued, in which case depending on jurisdiction they difference will usually be taxed as income on exercise. If you're really unlucky about where you are and how the options are arranged, you might even get taxed based on the market price on exercise. E.g. Norway at least used to be that way a while back unless you took specific precautions to get the options issued under an approved scheme.

It's something to be aware of, as it means a lot of people might not be able to afford to exercise the options before they're ready to sell the shares, which means your total gains gets taxed as income most places (as opposed to if you see the company on a nice upwards trajectory and exercise and wait, in which case you may end up paying only capital gains and in some cases depending on where you are might end up paying reduced capital gains rates on the growth from your exercised onwards). The difference between a good and bad options plan can easily be 50%+ tax (e.g. UK, if you're careless you might pay 53.8% - top rate income tax + national insurance + employers national insurance contributions, vs. 10% if your company qualifies for certain incentive schemes for startups and the options plan is structured right..)

It might seem great to have a really low strike price, but if you expect to be in it for the long haul and might contemplate exercising options before you're ready to sell your shares, talk to a tax lawyer before agreeing to options terms.

Based upon the number of hours the people who I knew at Zynga were putting in - IMHO they were far from receiving a good rate when looked at hourly.

100k at 60-70+ hrs per week in a place with some of the highest living costs is not all that admirable of pay if you ask me. Yes they are not on the street but its not exactly the bees' knees either.

The cost of living in the hip part of Berlin (Kreuzberg/Friedrichshain) has nearly DOUBLED in the last 5 years. You're now looking at nearly $1500 per month for a 900 square foot 2-bedroom. :D

My place a bit farther out is €1000/mo and is 1800 square feet. My office is on one floor (the one with the small balcony) and living quarters upstairs (the big balcony).

Sorry, I'll stop now.

That said, London is more expensive.

That depends a _lot_ on where in London.

My 3 bedroom 1000sqft house with a garden in London has a current rental value of about $1600. That's the difference between living in a leafy, relatively unfashionable suburb in the South of London vs. living in one of the enclaves of rich people or hipsters in the centre of town. I have a 45 minute commute to the centre, door to door.

The Bay Area is a bigger place BTW.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locati...

The place I lived in Mountain View was prime real estate. I was on Castro street, one of the only walkable places outside of San Francisco proper. There is plenty of cheaper real estate in MV.

Similarly in Battersea I live near Clapham Junction. I can get to Heathrow in 40, Gatwick in 30, Soho in 25 and Bright on 50! I can also cycle to Trafalgar Sq in 20 mins if the lights are favorable. Again, there are cheaper places around, but not without worse location or other problems with the property.

Also, the first property on the link you listed is £390 a week. You do realize that that is $2700 / month right? And you do realize that in Mountain View when you rent there is no council tax, and you don't pay estate agents any fees at all. In fact there are no estate agents, and property holders often give you some kind of deal like reduced rent for the first month to get you to sign a lease.

(JK)

You don't think I actually work for Berlin salary, do you?! This is the Internet!

"I'm getting an XKCD 303 back from the developer."

Everyone I know that worked at a startup has ended up out of a job with little to no payout (beyond their salary). It's a risk.

If you don't want to take that risk, work at a non-startup company.

I found myself nodding along in full agreement with the GP, then doing the same, after reading the top rebuttal.

/enqueues 10 minutes of self-loathing, for being so fickle minded. ;)

They effectively worked two full-time jobs for a year and a half, and got paid for one. Average salary for a programmer at Zynga seems to be around $100k, which is less than I make working 37.5 hour weeks, not 100-hour ones.

So, yes. It's pretty heartbreaking to see them get fucked over after giving their entire life to Zynga for the better part of 2 years. I'm not sure why you think otherwise, frankly.

I don't consider it heartbreaking when someone makes a conscious decision to stick around in a crappy situation in the hopes of striking it rich and it doesn't work out.

What?!? Folks: ZNGA still has a market cap of almost $2 billion. Your average startup engineer is lucky to see any decent and timely exit event. So even at these "low" prices, from where I sit they are still looking better than many of their peers.

"Life's not fair", bellum omnium. But the reason to talk about fairness is that it's something to strive for and insofar as we can make things fairer (like through SEC regulation) we should.

Nobody's saying the losers here are catastrophically equivalent to a war zone. But worthy of sympathy? Sure. Just because you're rich doesn't mean things can't suck for you, subjectively.

If I cried constantly, for the age of the universe, times infinity, it would not be enough to express the sadness I feel.

An infinite number of oceans the size of the Sun would not be enough to capture all our tears.