Re: How many worthless stock options do yo
Early Microsoft employees, even writers, have
a large paper net worth.
That's true of several large companies. However, most of these examples are from the glory days of high-tech, not from the last few years. They also tend to accrue over a decade or longer, not overnight.
I'm not sure that we'll see the glory days come around again. Over the last few years, high-tech has reached market saturation. There may still be a few surprises, but, if I had to bet, I wouldn't expect a new high-tech giant to emerge in the next few years to rival Microsoft or HP or Sun. The frontier, as it were, seems to be closing.
As for paper worth, I can't help pointing out that it is very different from actual worth. Last year, I couldn't walk the floor of Linuxworld without brushing elbows with paper millionaires, but very few of them had more ready cash than I did.
In many companies, your ability to dispose of stock depends on the major shareholder's approval, so you often have trouble converting paper worth to actual worth. I also know of a couple of companies where employees have found that, when they did gain possession of their stock, they couldn't find any buyers. That's something that isn't often explained when the options are handed out.
If people are cynical about options, it's no wonder. While a few companies have given them as a way to increase morale and involvement with the company, far more have given them out with all the cynicism of Macdonald's making a charitable donation. The number of people who have given free overtime and trashed their personal lives chasing the carrot of options - only to be disillusioned - makes it very hard not to regard the whole subject with distaste. I suppose you could say that nobody forced people to get involved with companies that substituted options for pay, but, from the same perspective, there's nothing wrong with being a con artist.
Personally, I vastly prefer the old style companies in which options are given simply as a minor benefit with no forced talk of "empowerment" and phony benevolence - the approach is at least honest.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
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Re: How many worthless stock options do yo: From: Marilynne Smith
Re: How many worthless stock options do yo: From: Sabahat Ashraf
Re: How many worthless stock options do yo: From: Bruce Byfield
Re: How many worthless stock options do yo: From: Peter
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