Your comment is so isolated from the real world, and the very fundamentals of humanity, that I have to wonder how old you are and if you even have a girlfriend. Let alone kids.
The comment you wrote is something I would have written 17 years ago on a Prodigy bulletin board forum after I just finished reading some selected essays of Ayn Rand.
Wait so you think it's reasonable to bank on some uncertain future benefit to pan out, and expect people to be 'heartbroken' when it doesn't go through? Come on, you don't mean that, do you?
When I worked for a startup, I only considered my salary in my financial decisions. This also meant that I could switch jobs and be reasonably certain that my standard of living wouldn't change. We were offered equity as well, and the agreement we had to sign had several provisions that I could only describe as being pro-founder/anti-employee. For example:
1. Upon termination of employment (for any reason), the company can buy back your shares at book price, whether you like it or not. In other words: You'll never see a big payout from your work if you go.
2. There should be no expectation of a market for the shares in the company, and there may never be one. Again, good luck selling those shares.
3. The founder has the right to sell his shares, but employees have no tag-along right. So even if the company is sold, you will probably not be able to cash in at that point, since your labor/skill are part of the sale.
4. The employees' shares are subject to dilution. How much dilution? Who knows, maybe 1%, maybe 99%, whatever's good in the view of the founders.
This stuff is pretty standard, too. What I don't get though is how people will make multi-decade (i.e. mortgage, kids) financial decisions on a benefit that's this uncertain. Instead of actual equity, they could just say "we'll give you more money later if we get rich and feel like it". At least it would be more honest.
I can't believe people are actually willing to sign those kinds of agreements. If you can't sell you shares and the company can basically buy them back at will, the ownership is just theoretical. It's like getting monopoly money with the added clause that you may exchange it for real money if the owners get rich and want let you perform the exchange.
Please tell me that at least some companies have reasonable agreements with their employees/shareholders. Otherwise it's like someone else said a few months ago, Silicon Valley is just overrun with sleazy leadership types who do their best to screw over their employees.
I couldn't believe it either, and left that place pretty quickly. I still talk to a lot of people that work there, and I get the feeling that they live in this bubble where they assume everything will work out for the best. To them, I'm just cynical.
I hope that this isn't the rule in most places, but I wouldn't know :/
A players get to negotiate stock option agreements. The average employee is given options as part of their compensation package, and there usually isn't much flexibility on management's part. At least that's my experience in the four dotcoms I've worked for.
hyperbole much? all s/he said was that one situation reminded her/him of another. based on her/his comment you can't even tell how he feels about either!
Hopefully the parent just replied to the wrong comment, since I read over my comment a few more times and couldn't see how I potentially stepped out of bounds egregiously :(.
But anyways, the similarity I see is that in both cases, the individuals would have exercised poor financial decision making by assuming that non-realized or potentially temporary increases in income streams were real/permanent. I'd guess that financial professionals have experienced something similar, by assuming that the year end bonus would be size X when they actually only ended up getting X/2, or making purchases assuming job security until the end of the year but getting laid off.
Well to plays devil's advocate, the coal miner is working in a coal mine because he did not get a superior education.
You can argue about why, but I am willing to bet (I don't know anyone working at Zynga) that many of these employees still have tens of thousands of dollars in college loans and seeing the sacrifices they made to get into a position in order to pay them off, erased in a matter of weeks, makes them feel like trapped rats.
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?
>Well to plays devil's advocate, the coal miner is working in a coal mine because he did not get a superior education.
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, unlike ditch diggers and coalminers, programmers (and other educated folk) can work until they die if need be. This make it or break it silicon valley thing is kind of distorting people their brains. Most people in this world have a job to provide for their family; as a developer you are much better off doing that. You get paid more, it's easier to switch jobs, you can move mostly anywhere and you can work until you're old/dead and enjoy it. A lot of educated people (at least 2 devs) over 70 I know still work and are happy to do so.
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.
>>Really, try ditch digging for a year, and then we'll talk.
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.
>the coal miner is working in a coal mine because he did not get a superior education
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.
No it is sent to Soundexchange, and is split 50/50 with artist and label. It is the performance royalty.
It is a different royalty than publishing royalty which is BMI/ASCAP and those monies are sent directly to the label and they decide how to dole it out.
FYI terrestrial radio pay's 0% of revenue for performance royalties, Satellite Radio pays about 8% of revenue and Pandora pays around 50%
This unfair system of royalty payments were set up by the RIAA mafia in the mid 90's to discourage Internet radio since it would be a direct competitor to the old guard.
That is why there is current legislation introduced 4 weeks ago to bring parity to the royalty system. Why should a song that is played on FM radio pay a different set of royalties than one played on Satellite or one streamed on the Internet?
I personally have received several checks from internet streaming, for some big hit songs I played on as a session musician, yet those same songs, which were played tens of millions of times on terrestrial radio, paid me NOTHING, because terrestrial radio does not pay performance royalties.
If we understood that we'd be better off I think. It is a classic drive by commenting, comment created 18 minutes ago and account created at the same time.
It would be interesting if accounts were sort of pre-hellbanned where they thought they were commenting but they weren't visible until may the third comment in as many days. Then they could become visible or something.
"But, I just fail to see how they are going to get a strong user base"
Why not some integration with Pandora, where you can create user specific radio stations based off of the band's Myspace profile, that is also linked to their tour schedule etc etc?
Then all Pandora users who have a station created from that band can be notified either though a push notification or e-mail when they are playing a club within a 30 mi radius?
Integrating with the current Pandora userbase would fix the "how will they build a userbase?" and then Pandora would have another venue to access unsigned bands that they can promote through their Music Genome Project.
Does it matter? The artist and label legally agreed to a contact between the two parties. Sure you don't like it and think that the label is making more money than you think it should, but the artist legally allowed that price difference to happen.
Spotify and iTunes may have similar UI but this site and Spotify are identical. One can assume Spotify was inspired by the design of iTunes, since well, lets be honest, its how everybody now pictures their music players. This site on the other hand had done nothing new at all, its blatant theft of Spotify's interface.
The NYTimes is the official mouthpiece for the US government, no matter who is in the White House. They will never be allowed to fail. (until some other mouthpiece for the White House emerges)
Before you 'junk' me, why not read the words the editor of the NYTimes, Bill Keller, spoke 2 years ago:
If you think retaining some information at the behest of a government or source makes you a corrupt broker of information... Then there's never been a pure news agent ever.
That was required reading at the conservatory I went to years ago. (Not by the teachers, among us classmates. We made everyone read that we interacted with)
Got to play with Kenny at a jam thing a decade ago. Absolutely amazing experience.
There is so much that I can extrapolate on this subject, but I believe the greatest hurdle for a serious musician is that after you master all the dexterity, independence and music theory, the biggest hurdle is your own fucking self.
Twitter did not exist then, so I think it is obvious to the people who read this website how a tag like that would be there now.