When a Unicorn Startup Stumbles, Its Employees Get Hurt - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/technology/when-a-unicorn-start-up-stumbles-its-employees-get-hurt.html <comment><USER2> I remember clearly when I was in a similar situation with the sale of a company I helped start in 1999. All this gain on paper which required (because of the Alternative Minimum Tax rule) that I pay taxes on gains I had not realized. And then later realizing an actual loss. And the decade afterwards of getting $3,000/year that I could claim against my taxes.

The only reason I'm not still claiming my $3,000 a year is that we had some gains that could be offset by those losses in 2007 and 2008. Of course there are the much higher fees to have your taxes prepared.

I agree with the Times that it is the non-executive employees who get the worst of it, both because it may be the only investment they have (other than their 401k) and they may not have any experience in managing risk.

For example, the article mentions, and my own experience mimics, that the executives are in a bind when it comes to discussing company performance and prospects. Legal risks abound if they mislead and existential risks abound if they demoralize the company. It would be especially problematic when the company has started the IPO process as Good had.

Then there is the greed factor that comes in on everyone's part. The board turns down an $825M offer because they feel it is their duty, given they expect the company is worth more than that. Employees don't cash out some of their holding at $3/share expecting a bigger IPO lift. Both angry because nobody came from the future to tell them, hey this is the best offer you are ever going to get for this stock, take it. And so they "ride" the value down and get angrier and angrier but its hard to know at whom.

When this happened to me, I was holding 10,000 shares of Sun stock that had been $60 a share in 2000, that was going down and down and down. It later reverse split 3:1 (so down to 3,333 shares) and sold for $9.50 a share to Oracle or about $32,000. I was really angry at myself for "losing" so much money. Of course it wasn't that I had "lost" the money, I never had it, it was all on paper, I just hadn't converted at the time because I was hoping to convert when it was even "more". Or put another way, my greed kept me from selling something which could have paid off my mortgage at the time.

<comment><USER3> >Employees don't cash out some of their holding at $3/share expecting a bigger IPO lift. Both angry because nobody came from the future to tell them, hey this is the best offer you are ever going to get for this stock, take it.

Quoting from the article:

>Employees had little idea that an outside appraisal firm had valued Good at $434 million and the common stock at about 88 cents a share as of June 30, according to investor documents and legal filings.

It just sounds to me like the greed on management's side trumped anything the employees may have had.

Thanks for your story. I was part of a startup which sold as well. One employee was left with a tax burden to pay off, and I broke out even ($0 from sale, no tax). The founder took home money though......

I think it's important that people hear these stories when deciding what their personal reasons are for joining a company.

<comment><USER2> I'm not arguing, but I would like to point out that you've just fallen into the same trap I was discussing. According to the article the employees had a chance to sell shares at $3 a share, _later it came out that an outside firm felt the shares were worth less._ The trap is using information from later to beat yourself up about what you didn't do then.

It is an easy trap to fall into, you're in your own future looking back with more information than you had then, and you are seeing how you could have acted differently for a much better result. And then you beat yourself up for not acting differently. But the truth is it isn't your fault.

But the learning is, be more mindful of choices (and non-choices) and their future financial impact. It is much easier (and desirable) to see the "success" scenario, than it is the "failure" scenario, but if you work it out and sell half when you have the chance, then you reduce future outcomes to "only capturing half the value" and "giving up half the gain". Both of which are more tolerable than "losing all value".

<comment><USER4> The article details examples of 'information asymmetry' between employees and execs, at the same point in time.

According to the article: -June 30: outside firm values common stock at $0.88 -'Late July': Board knows they only have 30-60 days of cash -'August': Some employees buy common stock at $3.34/share

<comment><USER2> There is always information asymmetry, sometimes situational and sometimes regulatory, its the foundation of the insider trading regulations.

The point is to know that there is information that you can't know which could swing the decision either way, and information you do know which could be true or false. And then objectively looking at your choices and deciding how much risk you're willing to take and then owning that decision, no going back later and beating yourself up for it because of something you didn't know.

As a startup employee, you need to be mindful of opportunities to convert your non publicly traded stock (or options) into cash. And then decide when (and if) those opportunities arise, what to do about it.

While some folks advise people to exercise their option when it vests so that later when they sell it they can get long term capital gains treatment, I advise them to not do this. My advice is based on looking at the four scenarios:

1) Don't exercise your options, stock is worthless

Total win, you didn't lose any money in the process.

2) Exercise early, stock is worthless

Total lose. AMT tax paid which can only be recovered $3,000 per year, money paid to exercise is all lost.

3) Don't Exercise, stock is worth 10x what you paid for it

Partial win, you get to pay for exercising the stock and the tax out of the proceeds of exercising and selling it, but you are taxed at the ordinary income rate and if you get into a high enough tax bracket a lot of deductions get taken away.

4) Exercise early, stock is worth 10x what you paid for it

Total win, you sell your stock and pay a minimum of tax on it.

Three "win" scenarios, and 1 total lose scenario. You remove the total lose by not exercising your option which leaves you with two "win" scenarios but not winning as much as you might have (lower risk, there is no "lose" scenario)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there some other industry where, when a company stumbles, its employees don't get hurt? I live in Michigan, and when the car industry "stumbled" everyone I locally know at least knew someone who got hit, at the _very very_ least with long-term stagnant wages even as their responsibilities amped up to cover the missing people, and they were the ones who came out relatively unscathed.

I mean, the details of the article are all fine and dandy and interesting (no sarcasm, there's nothing wrong with the facts and they're at least worth a story), but the headline and framing seem to imply that there's some sort of alternative?

The only problem unique to the tech-unicorns here is exercising stock options when you can't pay for the taxes. Don't do that.

<comment><USER6> At least with the auto industry, the unions were able to offer some protections for the worker. How many programmers belong to a union?

<comment><USER7> > How many programmers belong to a union?

Thankfully none.

One of the main reasons the car companies stumbled are unions. The whole thing has degenerated to insanity squared.

For example, GM had a clause in their contract requiring them to not fire employees displaced by technology or automation. In other words, if you improve your workflow and process and can do the same work with 25 people instead of 100, you can't fire the people you no-longer need. All incentives to innovate in process and technology very quickly evaporate with such insanity in place.

They reportedly had thousands of people show up for "work" every day drawing 95% salaries and full benefits only to go to this building, read the newspaper and drink coffee all day.

Unions had their day and reason to exist. I am not proposing they need to disappear. However, they need to mutate into something that works towards a mutually beneficial and sustainable ecosystem.

By pushing for, and obtaining, ridiculous grants, they create short term apparent gains and HUGE long term losses as thousands of people lose their jobs when they industry they worked in simply crumbles under the weight of onerous arrangements that cause them to lose the ability to compete and remain financially viable. In fact, if you look at Detroit, one could argue the unions went beyond costing people their jobs and companies their ability to compete, they actually succeeded at destroying a whole city.

How is this, in any imaginable reality, good?

A couple of articles:

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114118143005186163](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114118143005186163)

This one covers other issues:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/20/what- explain...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/20/what-explains-gms- problems-with-the-uaw/)

From the Forbes article:

"A worker might be able to retire in his early 50s and collect an annual pension of $37,500, paid wholly by GM. By 2008 there were 4.6 retired GM employees for each active worker. Did anyone think this was sustainable?"

It's called "killing the golden goose".

<comment><USER8> You earn a union.

You earn a union by not treating your employees well, if you knew the history of the labor movement in the 30's you'd better understand how things got to be the way they are, and why the relationship is adversarial, instead of cooperative.

If your employees are trying to unionize its because of longstanding grievances held by a significant minority if not majority of your workforce - grievances that have either not been meaningfully addressed, or can't be aired, because there is no workable mechanism to air them. It's not just pay (though often is primarily pay - we'll put up with all sorts of shenanigans for a big paycheck) if often as much about working conditions and esprit de corps as it is pay.

If you don't want a union, pay your employees well (well above market), or have a great working environment and instill a sense of pride and appreciation in your management - and make it clear you value their contributions as well - it's this balance of pay and working environment that keeps a workplace healthy and union free.

The car companies stumbled because they had a high cost structure and they ziged when the market zagged - while the union contributed to the high cost structure, they had nothing do to with changing market conditions.

<comment><USER9> > If you don't want a union, pay your employees well (well above market), or > have a great working environment

Third option seems to move the jobs out of the country, which is what happened to highly unionized manufacturing sector.

<comment><USER7> It isn't about not wanting them. It's about them being constructive as opposed to destructive in the long term.

<comment><USER9> Right. I'm just pointing out proponents of unionization usually pretend that unionization costs zero to the workers' wallets. Well, there's the dues, but in theory they pay for themselves in increased benefits, therefore any rational employee should join the union.

The elephant in the room is the migration strategies the employer starts exploring when faced with an added cost (offshoring, moving to a right-to-work state, increasing automation, switching from vertical integration to third- party contractors).

<comment><USER7> For many industries a hike in costs (with unionization related costs being one example) triggers a chain reaction causing companies to seek lower costs. This often means leaving the US or Europe.

Going to China isn't, as some like to put it, due to greedy executives. It's actually due to responsible executives who are left with not choice but to go to China. As competitors stared to offshore many, many years ago, companies who did not were left with significantly greater cost structures and unable to compete.

I had exactly that problem 15 years ago when my competitors started to manufacture products in Korea while I was manufacturing in the US. And it wasn't just about labor costs. Our supply pipeline can be incredibly expensive. Our costs are higher every step of the way, the more you "touch" a component or assembly the more cost increases. The same electronic components --same part number, same manufacturer, not clones-- can cost five or six times less in China due to supply chain advantages.

Sometimes I feel folks who push unions in the US and think they are good for workers truly don't have a clue. All one has to do is try to manufacture something, anything, in the US to start understanding why we can't think 1930's mentality will continue to work. Even something as seemingly simple as a dog leash is almost impossible to manufacture in the US on a competitive basis. People just don't get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very glad the NYTimes ran this piece. The only part they underplayed is they made it sound like the startup "stumbled." No, it sounds like it went exactly as planned. Blackberry got the acquisitions, investors got their money, execs got their bonuses, and the rank-and-file got nothing. That isn't stumbling, that's the playbook.

Tech employees need to wake up about common vs preferred shares, and that the former are worthless. They are NOT worthless because they are "lottery tickets" and most startups fail. They are worthless because they are designed, as a financial instrument, to be fake equity with no real protection from dilution and liquidation preference.

The most insulting aspect of common shares is that engineers get talked into pay cuts on the premise that they get these options, essentially being asked to invest a portion of their potential compensation into the company, but are then told they don't deserve to be given real equity because they aren't "real" investors.

I understand that from a founder's perspective, asking someone to give you millions of dollars is significantly more challenging than asking someone to take a 30% pay cut, so it's easy to give strong preference to the former. But, supposedly and debatably, it's also difficult to recruit talent, and it's going to be significantly more difficult as employees increasingly realize that Common ISO's aren't "lottery tickets" they are "toilet paper". So either startups are going to have to re-invent these equity packages, or the talent will flock away from the VC companies and towards companies that can pay salary. Of course, the VCs have a huge playbook to flood the market with more talent to (taking $100 mil taxpayer money to fund the same bootcamps they invest in to work for the same companies they hire via Obama's tech talent shortage program, for example), so who knows.

<comment><USER11> > Tech employees need to wake up about common vs preferred shares, and that > the former are worthless. > ... > They are worthless because they are > designed, as a financial instrument, to be fake equity with no real > protection from dilution and liquidation preference.

You've muddled orthogonal concepts together here.

1\. Common shares are _not_ worthless. In general, just ask any founder who's had a successful exit. Founder shares (unless purchased along side financial investors for hard cash) are always common shares; if your straw man were correct, then there would be no wealthy founders.

2\. Liquidation preference is a negotiated term which _does_ have a rational basis for existing. Whenever you're putting in a larger proportion of the company's cash than the ownership you're buying, it is crucial to have protection against someone essentially liquidating the company for the cash. Say investor X is putting in $8 into a company that has $2 in the bank, but X is only buying 10% of the company. If the company is liquidated for that $10 tomorrow, X gets back $1 and the common stockholders get $9. (There are other protections against a perverse liquidation incentive, too, but this is the economic one.)

3\. The "real protection" from dilution is raising reasonable tranches of capital at a monotonically increasing series of valuations, which valuations actually correspond to a clearing price between bid and ask. Three key items here: "reasonable tranche," "monotonically increasing," and "clearing price."

a. Reasonable tranche: raise reasonable sized rounds, because huge rounds create weirdness (lopsided power, outsized compensatory "asks" by investors, etc.).

b. Monotonically increasing: needless to say, down rounds are the big dilution problems. Sometimes they happen because life isn't perfect and problems come up. Sometimes they happen because the company screwed up and raised too much at too high a valuation previously.

c. Clearing price: if the company and investor actually agree on the "true" valuation then it's easy. If they still try to force a deal where the company wants a crazy "optical" valuation that the investor doesn't really see, then you'll get layering-on of sweeteners to make the effective valuation much much lower than the notional, but all kinds of terrible side effects may accrue.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for the informative response.

1) Ok, Google/FB common shares were worth something. Those are extreme outliers in exits, and had ethical founders. But founders have another option if they drive the common share value to nothing - retention bonuses. They can say, ok we will make all the common shares worthless, but you can just give me a huge package as part of the aquisition. So employees can't rely on founders looking after common shares out of self-interest. If you read the article, it looks like that's extremely similar to what happened in this case.

2) All these financial experts can figure out a way to protect their necks without leaving the employees necks under the axe.

3) Real protection would also be voting rights, which generally preferred shares get a lot more of, and then less tangible things like invitation to board meetings, something mere employees accept is absurd to expect. As long as employees agree to sacrifice compensation while being told they're not investors and don't deserve to be treated like one, they're getting hoodwinked.

<comment><USER11> I have several friends and acquaintances whose exits as founders were in the $5-500 M gross exit value range -- far from a Google / FB outcome.

Those people all made an entire career's worth of money, or more, all at once* and with capital gains tax treatment to boot. (* well, after an earnout / lockup)

They also exclusively held common shares.

The deciding factor is whether their exit value was a meaningful multiple of the invested capital. If you raise $100 M and sell for $100 M then it's hardly fair to expect a windfall. If you raise $50k and sell for $5 M it's very fair to expect a meaningful personal outcome.

<comment><USER12> "> Tech employees need to wake up about common vs preferred shares"

The important distinction is employee vs founder. You mention founders in your comment.

Founders typically would hold a double-digit percentage of common shares.

Employees that might get offered 0.1% if they are an early hire, or less assuming later stage (discounting exec hires here, because the OP of this thread was about engineers).

Founders also typically got their common shares at a very low valuation - let's say they were issued pre-money, then their value to the tax man might be $200K (of a 2M pre-money valuation), but with a vesting schedule that makes them tax efficient.

Employees typically get their common shares at a higher valuation, post money, with a 200M valuation. Their 0.1% is also worth $200K to the tax man.

See how this is different?

<comment><USER13> You're exaggerating for dramatic effect. First of all, 1-2% is not uncommon for truly early employees. Second, it's quite typical for founders to work for free for a significant length of time to get the company off the ground. If the founders got the company to a 200M valuation with money in the bank to pay salaries, explain to me why employees deserve to be in the same order of magnitude shareholders as founders?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article highlights the need for two changes in the startup world:

1) We need a different term for the "post-money valuation" that VCs place on a company after fundraising. It is not a valuation in the same way that a public company is valued, due in large part to the preferred stock liquidation preference. Employees hear about a $1B valuation and assume that the IPO or acquisition price will be some multiple of that "valuation".

2) We need some tax reform that prevents employees from needing to pay a tax bill with cash for illiquid shares in a privately held company. It makes perfect sense for an employee of a publicly traded company to need to allocate some of their stock grants to tax obligations, seeing as though they can sell those shares at any time. But employees of privately held companies can't sell their stock (usually), and needing to take real dollars to pay a tax bill on those shares is just not the spirit of the law.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure we need #2 - we need companies to be better about not forcing their employees to exercise options when they leave the company and we need employees not to exercise options early to minimize the taxes they may have to pay in a windfall. This can simply be executed by every company without any government tax code reform needed.

<comment><USER16> we need both what you suggest and tax reform around options. It is crazy that you have to pay tax on stock you cant sell. It would be incredibly easy for the IRS to just say when you execute an option that stock will always be treated as regular income and can never get benefit of capital gains tax no matter how long you hold it before selling. There are obviously many drawbacks to this but at least you cant get screwed paying taxes on money you never earn. This will never happen because the people lobbying for the current tax codes are not the people getting hurt by these ridiculous AMT rules. AMT was created to prevent people like steve jobs from collecting their entire salary in the form of options and not paying any taxes but the people most effected are clearly not rich CEOs like steve jobs

If i buy a plot of land work hard to build a house on that land i dont have to pay tax on the increased value of the property until i sell it yet if i work at a company and buy options as it grows i am taxed immediately before i can realize a gain

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Regarding the fact that the employees had to pay tax on what turned out to be worthless shares:

They could have avoided this by waiting to exercise their options on the eve of the liquidity event. In this case there would have been no risk. But they exercised earlier presumably to start the clock on long term capital gains treatment for the stock they received when they exercised.

They took risk they didn't need to take and they got burned. It's worth keeping that in mind as another aspect to the story.

<comment><USER18> You can't presume that they exercised early voluntarily. If you leave the company, you typically have 90 days to exercise options or they are forfeited back to the company. In other cases, they actually just expire after enough time passes, which again forces employees to exercise before a liquidity event.

<comment><USER17> Fair point. I did make that assumption.

<comment><USER19> Again though nobody forced them to exercise. It accelerates the timeline, but it's not forcing anyone into anything more than having to make a decision.

<comment><USER20> Typically, when you leave a company that issued you incentive options, you are forced to execute within 90 days or forfeit the shares entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm going to keep repeating this comment until the world hears it--I think most people joining startups are being taken advantage of without realizing it. Sorry to be repeating myself:

If you're primarily interested in making money, or if you love the startup but not the compensation, you should NOT work at that startup.

If you're a good developer, you can get a better deal by working at an established company and simply investing. This has been true for every startup offer I've ever seen. Ever.

I've considered lots of startup jobs because I believed strongly in the companies. Every single time, however, I was able to get a larger chunk of the company by keeping my current job and simply investing.

To give an example, my current job pays about $250k, and one year, I invested $100k of that into a startup, leaving me with ~$150k of salary. This $150k + startup equity was a better deal than the startup was offering in both salary and equity (BY FAR). Plus, equity bought as an investor is much less tax toxic than equity options received as an employee of a startup.

On the other hand, most people who work at startups aren't interested in money. If that's you, that's totally cool!

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the comment, but 'investing' 100k, a sum FAR more than almost anyone reading the comment will ever see in their own bank accounts, is not 'investing' for most of us. Diversity and spreading the risk is bread and butter for almost all of us. Throwing 100k into a company you believe in' is a greater gamble than almost any reader could ever justify to their spouse and expect to stay married. You live in a very different world.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, good point--I'd recommend investing only $10k or $20k if possible.

One of my points, though, is that you are effectively investing $100k in the company by taking a crap deal to work there (e.g., via a $25k pay cut over 4 years of work). For that $100k, you're getting much less than you would get by simply straight-up investing $100k.

<comment><USER23> Would you mind sharing a few things:

\- age \- Bay area/NYC or somewhere else? \- how do u deal with taxes, 401K contributions and still have 100K leftover?

I am possibly overcontributing 401K (maxing the 18K allowed by the IRS) and certainly overpaying rent (bay area :[). How the heck does one manage to save/invest 100K even at that salary? As a soon to be father, I need to get my act together asap.

<comment><USER21> I'm 30 years old, and my rent is about $1200/month (I'm married, which helps cut down on costs).

After taxes, $250k becomes $150k. After rent, food, staying alive, some travel, etc., I'm left with about $100k disposable per year. Like most of you, I don't really have nice things, fancy clothes, etc.

I would continue to max out contributions to retirement accounts, though! You can invest in startups via IRAs and Roth-IRAs (I have done it).

<comment><USER24> Thats interesting. Can you please share how you invested in startups via Roth- IRAs? I am exploring ways to do something similar.

<comment><USER21> I used a Pensco self-directed IRA:

[https://www.pensco.com/](https://www.pensco.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> By joining a late stage (vs early stage) startup as an employee, you are trading execution risk for valuation risk.

At an early stage startup, your shares are essentially free to purchase - especially if you join a company which hasn't had a formal external valuation event (like a fundraise) yet. All your risk is around the startup evolving into a successful business with a high value.

Join a late-stage startup, and most of the execution risk is gone. But the company may already have an artificially high value attached - so you have a lot of risk that your shares end up being worth significantly less than you paid for them.

The real unicorn, for an employee, is a middle- to late-stage company which has successfully executed, is growing, and ideally hasn't had any formal external valuation events. There your shares are cheap to buy and extremely likely to increase in value.

<comment><USER26> > The real unicorn, for an employee, is a middle- to late-stage company which > has successfully executed, is growing, and ideally hasn't had any formal > external valuation events.

And, like a real unicorn, it doesn't exist. At least not in today's funding environment.

<comment><USER25> No, I know a couple. Look for companies with around $10-100m annual revenues and no external investors. If you speak to their owners, their biggest frustration is, ironically, competing with unicorns for talent recruitment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > _Even worse, they had paid taxes on the stock based on the higher value._

That's the most annoying part of the entire article, and why I ask for salary rather than equity. Keep your stock, I'd rather pay my bills.

<comment><USER28> Joining public or late stage pre-IPO companies, equity provides the possibility of real wealth. There is a great Wealthfront article about this -- that if you live in the bay area and have a normal nuclear family, you _need_ equity if you hope to pay for a house, college, etc.

I've seen this in my own life and in many colleagues, friends, and people I've hired. It's not a guaranteed paycheck, but in the bay area getting a healthy equity grant is part of the standard comp package. Without luck, it can be a nice bonus. With some luck it can really move the needle. And with ISO's especially you can choose when to pay taxes on the income.

I know that outside the bay area comp packages are structured differently -- and often less lucratively.

<comment><USER29> The problem here is that "the possibility of real wealth" is not "real wealth". Not being dead provides "the possibility of real wealth" to approximately the same degree as the equity offered to anyone past double digit employee count. Even before that it's only factor unity above the baseline of "not yet dead"

<comment><USER28> It's a subjective term. But IMO, a few hundred grand after-taxes is real wealth to somebody making $150k a year. It can bend the net-worth growth curve of your life -- a huge home downpayment, elimination of your student loans, etc. Be smart, take an educated risk, and IMO don't listen to people who say equity is worthless.

<comment><USER29> A few hundred grand net absolutely is real wealth. To anybody really. But how many people are seeing a few hundred grand after-taxes (after taxes!)?

<comment><USER28> Over a 4 year grant? This is just a guess, I don't have the IRS database at my hands. Maybe $200-300k after-tax sounds more reasonable? Like I said above -- "with some luck"

<comment><USER29> You have not yet actually made a guess you've just kept asserting that "a lot of money" is "a lot of money" and I agree. A lot of money is a lot money. I just think that modulo nobody is actually seeing a lot of money from start-up employee equity.

<comment><USER28> The problem is that it's not an easy thing to estimate. I know I've had equity grants that I thought were worth $x but turned out to be worth $x * 4. But you don't sell all of it at once, and you don't pay all of the tax bill when you sell, so it's a very hard thing to know. $200-300k after taxes is, I'm sure, not a rare outcome over a 4-year vest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The fact that some employees have to pay taxes based on the valuations that VCs dream up terrifies me.

<comment><USER31> Only those who early exercise, or exercise their stock as it vests. They did this to try and optimize for long-term capital gains.

For most employees who leave their option grants as options, there is nothing to worry about.

When you are given a grant of stock options, you can sometimes ask the company to let you exercise it early, and vest the shares instead of the options. If you do this when the fair market value (FMV) of the underlying stock is the same as when the options are granted, you will not be in a precarious tax situation. However, many people wait a couple years before deciding to exercise their options, and as a result, they need to recognize a paper gain when they exercise later as the FMV is substantially higher. That's what happened here. They exercised later, thinking the stock price would go even higher, and they were wrong, but they had to pay taxes on that higher price.

While it's true they paid a lot of extra taxes, since they never recognized the gains, they can roll that tax credit forward to cover future gains they may get at some other point in the future. I'm not sure how long you can roll these losses forward, but I think it's for a substantial period of time.

<comment><USER32> Correct me if I'm wrong, but even with an early exercise (or an exercise of vested options) where the valuation matches the strike price, that employee would still have had to personally fork over the amount needed to purchase the underlying shares. In the scenario described in the article, they've still lost a substantial chunk of money if the valuation is now a fraction of the strike price.

Secondly, while capital losses can be carried forward indefinitely, you can only apply ~$3,000 per year (as a deduction, not a credit).

<comment><USER33> > _that employee would still have had to personally fork over the amount > needed to purchase the underlying shares_

Then what is the difference over just buying the shares outright as opposed to exercising options?

My understanding has always been that exercising options means getting a benefit (the shares) which has a value (the strike price) and you subsequently pay tax on that value.

<comment><USER34> You pay the strike price in cash and you get the shares. Your "basis" in the shares is the strike price (what you invested).

You base your AMT tax calculation on the difference between the fair market value and the strike price (that's the "phantom income").

When you sell the shares, your realized capital gains is based on the original basis and you may have AMT basis that's different.

If you exercise and immediately sell, AMT doesn't factor in.

Concretely (and picking semi-random numbers): If your strike price is $10/sh, the FMV is $25/share, and you have options on 1000 shares, you'd pay $10K to exercise, get 1000 shares, and have $15K in AMT income to consider.

If those shares later soared to $40 and you sold, you'd have a capital gains of ~$30K ($40K proceeds minus $10K basis minus commissions and fees).

If those shares instead crashed to $0, you'd have possibly paid AMT on the phantom income and you definitely lost the $10K in cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I interviewed at this company a couple years back and a huge selling point at the interview was their upcoming IPO plans. They eventually gave me an offer which I turned down because enterprise and security is a boring area to work on. Based on these recent series of articles on startups, its becoming more and more apparent that while starting a startup is a fantastic thing to do, being an employee of one has mostly downsides. Its a much better career move for non-founders to work for large established companies.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 _Ms. Wyatt introduced BlackBerry's chief, John S. Chen, who winkingly apologized for how his deal makers had driven Good's final sale price down to $425 million, less than half of the company's $1.1 billion private valuation._

I've never been a CEO or acquired a company but I think there probably aren't too many worse things you could say to the employees of a company that you've just acquired.

<comment><USER36> You should see how awkwardly he debuted one of the latest phones, and you'll understand. Might just be social awkwardness. (Still sucks, but feels microscopically less malicious).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The biggest problem with employee equity is the taxes. Investors pay cash for their shares, and the transaction is completely tax neutral. When a company sells its own shares in exchange for cash, the IRS does not charge a penny.

But if an established company wants to get equity into the hands of its _employees_ now you have a problem. The way the tax law is written, you have basically 3 choices. Either the employee is paying you "fair market value", or you are giving them options with a strike price at "fair market value" and they can hope for future appreciation. Otherwise, if you try to just give them shares, the IRS needs to be paid, and in cash! So, for example, to simply give 10% of outstanding common shares (an illiquid and diluting asset) to your employees, you would have to pay 4% of your company's "fair market value" in cash to the IRS!

The problem is all in how you define this "fair market value" thing. If you sell some VCs equity along with what's basically a note payable (liquidation preference) and then say the "value" of the company is equal to the total raised divided by the percentage equity stake they received, all while totally ignoring the 'note payable' \-- that's complete madness! And it's the world we live it today.

If, alternatively, you first subtract off the top of any amount raised the full amount of any liquidation preferences, then only the _remainder_ was divided by the percentage equity stake to arrive at a valuation... For example, raise $10m for a 10% stake with a $10m preference -- then for tax purposes your common stock valuation should still be $0. Now you can grant however many common stock shares you want all day long, and you don't bleed cash to the IRS in order to do it.

Employees would still have to pay the full load of taxes on any _gains_ when they sell the shares. But this fixes a huge challenge of fairly compensating employees with equity without even dodging any fair share of taxes. Taxes should be due and payable when liquid value is actually received, not before.

</comment><comment><USER37> The problem here is the valuation model for the common stock was broken. Properly factoring in liquidation preferences and your 409a valuation of _common_ stock would not have ever hit $4.29 per share with 229 million shares outstanding. The fact that preferred shares sold for that price is completely irrelevant, it's like saying the Tesla sells for $80k so we'll just value this Nissan Leaf the same.

The IRS does not force these companies to improperly value the common stock. It's just the default position they take because it's cheaper for the company this way.

The 409a valuation is based on the price someone would pay for 100% of the outstanding shares of converted-to-common shares. This is much lower than preferred stock investment price (where the dollars are being put into the company to grow it, not being paid to shareholders to retire). It's even much lower than the secondary market price since that's the price for a small percentage of shares -- try selling them all and the bid/ask would fall to zero.

The price of illiquid common stock must reflect the risk-taking stance of management and the Board. Even having an $800m offer doesn't have to boost the common stock valuation so much because if management is declining those offers and swinging for the fences you can reasonably factor in that risk in the price.

Unless and until an actual IPO, companies should take a discounted future cash flow model based on single-digit future growth to demonstrate the common stock value is absolutely worthless, and everyone should be required to file 83(b).

We know its a lottery ticket, the tax code allows us to value it appropriately. The real problem is companies straight out fucking up their 409a. Common stock shareholders at Good would not be crazy to consider a lawsuit.

</comment><comment><USER38> I worked for this company (Good Technology) from July 2012 until Jan 2015 in their San Diego office.

I never exercised my options (they clearly weren't worth the strike price I had as a late joining employee at any time that I had vested shares) so no skin off my back, though I do know people who got screwed by exercising options because they left the company prior to the sale to Blackberry and were essentially forced to exercise the shares or just lose them. (I'm all for the trend pushing for much longer windows on this).

I also know a lot of people who came from companies this company aquired who stuck around for the eventual big payout that was much bandied about by much of the C-level management the entire time I was there who basically traded years of sweat equity for nothing (better than walking away in the hole, though!)

I found the article to be a pretty fair writeup of the events and a useful warning to people on the risks of stock exercising prior to liquidity events. This is a lesson I learned the hard way years ago (first dotcom boom), so I didn't get burned this time, and actually really enjoyed my time working for this company because the team in San Diego (which was pretty well isolated from the teams at the Sunnyvale headquarters) was a great group of people to work with, and I was paid pretty decently.

</comment><comment><USER39> It is precisely the protections of preferred stock that led to the overvaluation in the first place. [http://recode.net/2015/05/10/heres-one- thing-all-the-billion...](http://recode.net/2015/05/10/heres-one-thing-all- the-billion-dollar-unicorns-have-in-common/)

As a common stock holder, you should know that you'll be the last one paid, if at all, because few companies can meet unicorn expectations.

</comment><comment><USER40> > To pay those taxes, some employees emptied savings accounts and borrowed > money.

Investing your life savings and/or loaned money into a single stock is always a huge warning sign that you're being foolish.

<comment><USER41> Yes, this strikes me as very Enron-ish throughout.

<comment><USER40> Interesting. In what ways? Enron was a public company that committed fraud.

<comment><USER41> The management pushing the stock and painting a rosy picture while behind the scenes the ship was sinking.

The employees putting everything they had (and then some) into a single stock from their employer.

I don't know if there was criminal behavior involved but an imbalance of information was in play that cost the employees everything and then some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This topic has been in conversation a lot recently. Yet I feel we only have anecdotal data. I was wondering if we can get some real numbers on employee outcomes. I created a spreadsheet that aims to capture this and hopefully, we can get some real insights and conclusive data.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bIYwuz3bhRWPYazVamMD...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bIYwuz3bhRWPYazVamMDGamwrawnEtvDe8K-ys-6KtU/edit#gid=0)

All data is anonymous. You don't even need to be logged in to edit.

What do people think of this?

<comment><USER43> Real data is good, but that's not a good way to get real data.

I'm not a stats person, but it would seem to suffer from both an extremely small potential sample (those who read your post), a self-selection bias (those who gain an advantage by participating, e.g., the aggrevieved), and an outright unsual candidate sample pool (Hacker News).

Perhaps try something like Google Consumer Surveys, and ask a one-two question like: (1) are you currently working for a pre-IPO startup and (2) are your options underwater. Or similar.

<comment><USER44> It's going to be functionally impossible to get good data. Not least because I suspect the vc industry really really doesn't want potential startup employees to see the numbers. Or to think to hard about the wave of upcoming ipo devaluations coming to unicorns (viz a recent discussion from Mark Suster where 5/7 of 2015 large ipo exits where down rounds compared to previous valuations [1]). If the numbers were amazing you'd see someone like First Round giving exit surveys to all their companies and trumpeting the mean or median outcome. Or even YC; they are probably in a position to collect that data.

The best you'll be able to do is a site like glassdoor, with all the sample bias that implies. But even with glassdoor, I've told a recruiter to go away because their company pays poorly according to glassdoor. The recruiter then whined about glassdoor, but since he didn't provide me with salary numbers, what does he expect?

I've also pondered building a site similar to glassdoor to confidentially discuss outcomes, but the best you'll ever be able to do is anecdata.

[1] [http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2015/10/18/venture- outloo...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2015/10/18/venture- outlook-2016/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's interesting to compare this article with the coverage of the acquisition at the time.

 _" When Good Technology announced Friday that it had sold itself to its long- standing rival BlackBerry for $425 million in cash, it was a moment of triumph for Good CEO Christy Wyatt."_ \- [http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-christy- wyatt-sold-good-to...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-christy-wyatt-sold- good-to-blackberry-2015-9)

<comment><USER46> She made out like a bandit with $6m and no need to turn up to work ever again, so for her I'm sure it was pretty triumphant.

The fact that the very first action of the acquiring company was to give her enough money to never come back tells you all you need to know about her ability as CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you're going to work at a startup, ask for two things:

1\. No employee equity whatsoever, but a slightly higher salary to make up for it 2\. The ability to invest in the the next round

I've worked at a startup and done #1 and #2 above, and it's working out great. I'm very happy to be owning preferred shares.

<comment><USER47> arbitrage314:

Aren't you just lowering your risk, while simultaneously lowering your reward?

Eg, let's say you negotiate a 20k/year increase by not getting any stock options. If you spend that 20k to invest in their next round, you'll be paying for preferred shares, rather than common shares. Therefore, you'll be able to afford about 5x less shares than if you were exercising employee grants. Am I wrong?

Sure, you'll get preferred shares, but if the company does very well, your ultimate reward will be less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The real question is, when do you "buy in" to a valuation.

Things are only worth what someone else will pay. So if you don't have evidence that there is a buyer eagerly wanting to pay $5/share for the options you are getting for $4/share, don't assume they are worth anything.

Because of dilution math, it's very rare for employees of all but unicorn startups to cash in at anything close to the expected value of the shares. That means that your 50K shares awarded after a $5M series A (on a big pre money valuation) are not going to be worth much if the company sells for $10M the following year.

Founders _should_ set up a chart that tracks the various possible outcomes and lets employees understand what their options will be worth in those scenarios and see what the founder would get in those scenarios. This would allow additional shares to be given to valued employees if the company turns out to be a beautiful white horse but not quite a unicorn.

The thing to be aware of is when the founder has the option of cashing out for $10M and the employees effectively getting nothing. If this happens the investors will have essentially lost interest and will potentially get their investment back but will not mention the deal to anyone again. This is a sort of perverse incentive because the founder will be inclined to deceive employees into thinking a big exit is on the way, while simultaneously negotiating a low millions acquisition and high salary at the acquiring company.

In that scenario, the founder should have to renegotiate so that the most valuable employees get at least 10% of the founder's payout, but employees rarely have (or use) that much leverage with the founder.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can anyone provide any info on what actually happened here? The article says that the preferred was "worth" more, which is a pretty vague statement. I interpret this as meaning that they didn't convert because their liquidation preferences guaranteed a higher payout. What seems relevant to me, and anyone else who works at a pre-IPO startup, is what were the things to look for ahead of time.

According to Crunchbase, Good raised $291M in 4 rounds. Assuming those investors owned 40% of the business, then at $1.1B, common was splitting $660M (preferred would convert). At $425M, assuming 1x liquidation preference, common is splitting $134M, an 80% decrease. I think you could get to the numbers in the article assuming 1x participating or something similar.

This should have been pretty predictable to employees. You will not get rich if your company sells for only 1.4x the total amount invested.

<comment><USER50> I think the bigger concern (as far as employees are concerned) in this particular case is that the board turned down multiple more lucrative acquisition offers.

In addition to all the other issues mentioned here, the preferred/common split means that the preferred holders (ie the board) have much different incentives/risks than common - they can afford to "swing for the fences" due to the downside of liquidation preferences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I imagine this is going to be a lot worse now with unicorn craze. It seems like to some, any liquidation terms were acceptable to get to the $1b valuation mark.

<comment><USER52> Indeed. Smart, young companies are refusing preferred share investments and are willing to keep their valuation lower because of that. It's true that you're selling a larger portion of your future for less money in many ways, but you protect the founders and original investors as well as the employees too.

Huge growth is important but it's also important to be smart about it. Selling a part of your company for a bit less if often better than mortgaging the common shares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Wow. Employees get hurt, and the CEO gets awarded "CEO of the Year"

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/good-technology-chairman- ceo-c...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/good-technology-chairman-ceo- christy-175400298.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> Good/Visto alum here. I am just thankful that some omniscient hedge fund people offered to buy my shares at a little over a buck a share five years ago (hoping to cash in on their forthcoming IPO no doubt). This company was not a unicorn. It was a tapeworm! Not at all surprised at the outcome, except that it wasn't an outright courthouse auction of office supplies.

</comment><comment><USER46> Can the overpaid tax be claimed back?

<comment><USER55> Theoretically, but only over a very long period of many years. If it's a big enough overpay, then it's possible for it to take many decades.

edit: Here's a VERY simplified overview: [http://www.wikihow.com/Claim-AMT- Credit](http://www.wikihow.com/Claim-AMT-Credit)

<comment><USER56> I have enough overpaid tax at 33 to tide me over until death. Lessons learned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Ultimately the problem seems to be preferred shares driving the valuation of common shares. They obviously aren't the same, so I don't know why it happens. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if there's a way around this.

<comment><USER52> Fair Market Value drives the value of common shares, not preferred share costs. FMV is derived using a formula the IRS has to project what a share in the company is worth and it is usually far less than what the latest investors paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> For those interested in this topic, I suggest reading 'Venture Deals' by Brad Feld. While it's broader than this topic, it does cover some of the legal/technical elements of vc funding and exits, which help when trying to understand outcomes such as this (i.e., preferred vs common shares, etc). [http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer- Capitalis...](http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer- Capitalist/dp/1118443616)

</comment><comment><USER15> If you strip away all the logically questionable parts of this story, there are 2 really important takeaways:

\- Companies: don't make employees exercise options when they leave the company. I love the new "10 years to exercise" trend that has started to emerge. \- Employees: don't pay taxes or exercise options early to maximize your gains at an eventual exit. It makes no sense - keep the optionality.

</comment><comment><USER59> A similar thing happened to me. I joined a late stage startup with a market cap of $1.5B. It IPO'd a few years later with some critics calling it the worst IPO of the year. It now has a market cap of $600M. I felt betrayed by execs who had nothing but glowing things to say about the health of the business. I gave the company 2-3 quarters to show signs of hope then quit.

</comment><comment><USER60> UK resident here: why were employees paying tax on the nominal value of the shares? Is it not possible to structure the compensation so that tax is payable when the shares are sold (capital gains) or on any _dividends_ paid on the shares?

<comment> ryan-c > Why were employees paying tax on the nominal value of the shares?

Alternative minimum tax, created in 1969 to target 155 high-income households who were using too many tax loopholes. It was not adjusted for inflation, and it did not anticipate rank-and-file employees receiving stock options.

> Is it not possible to structure the compensation so that tax is payable when > the shares are sold (capital gains) or on any dividends paid on the shares?

Yes, but this requires the employee to pre-pay for the shares when they are issued.

Normal tax rules do not consider exercising options to be a taxable event, but AMT rules do. You can exercise options resulting in modest paper gains without them being taxed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> tl;dr -- if you are not a founder, your stock is never going to get as much thought as a founder / investor's will. And also they make decisions on your behalf, often which benefits them greatly, and you little.

<comment><USER62> more like - if you are not an exec....

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The only thing that scares me more than the current information asymmetry between investors and startup employees is the thought of the kind of structures engineers can come up with when their livelihood is at stake!

</comment><comment><USER64> If Good was a unicorn, that definition needs some work. Good was in a downward arc since 2011-2012 imo. How many new customers did they acquire compared to Airwatch/MobileIron/etc?

<comment><USER65> "Unicorn" is rather well-defined (if somewhat arbitrarily):any valuation north of $1bn qualifies a startup as a unicorn. In some cases - such as this, the $1bn+ valuation is fleeting / illusory.

<comment><USER64> Gotcha. Usually you hear the term referring to Uber, Dropbox, etc. I never would have put Good in that company. (Although Dropbox can't seem to make a product that I am willing to pay for)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> The answer to this is to

1 ban these multi class share classes 2 reform employee share taxation so that you only pay tax on a real liquidity event.

I know 1 is hard but 2 should be do able given SV's lobbying power.

</comment><comment><USER67> This sounds tautological...

</comment><comment><USER68> This article is written as if it's the startup's fault that tax laws are irrational. Doesn't reflect well on the NYT.

<comment><USER69> The decision to accept a deal which valued the employees' equity so low compared to the VC owned equity is entirely the company's own.

I suppose you could argue that the tax system should be aware that common stock valuation should not be inferred from preferred stock valuation...

<comment><USER17> The valuation of the company and the waterfall of the payment are two separate things. Presumably this was the highest valuation they could have gotten (no reason not to believe it given that it was a distressed sale). And the tax on the common stock the employees received when they exercised their options was based on the valuation of the common stock - so the tax system did correctly handle that.

<comment><USER69> They're not separate. The valuation of a thing is dependent on how much money the owners of that thing are willing to accept for it. The common stock holders' interests were poorly represented in the price negotiation. The decision to structure stock ownership in that way is, again, entirely the company's, not the tax system's.

Sure, employees share some responsibility for accepting compensation that includes stock which can be sold on your behalf without your having any say in the price you're willing to take... but companies choose to offer comp packages which include that kind of stock precisely because it's hard for employees to value, and it's easy for employees to overvalue.

<comment><USER17> > The common stock holders' interests were poorly represented in the price > negotiation.

You're mistaken here. Your point rests on there being a possibility that Blackberry paid the same amount for the company (the valuation), but common stock holders got more (the waterfall). This was not possible.

<comment><USER69> But the people negotiating the deal with Blackberry knew how the waterfall would shake out. They elected to agree to a price where the share of the purchase price distributed across common stockholders left many employees in a bad place. That was a choice. As was structuring the ownership of the company, and the compensation offers to their employees, in that way in the first place.

<comment><USER17> Right, but we have to assume that Good could not have gotten a better price from Blackberry. The alternative was even worse from the common shareholders - a price of $0 for their shares.

They also could not have changed the waterfall. So I'm not sure what your point is, really</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Diabetes - time for open data and disruptive technology - <AUTHOR> http://alexblandford.tumblr.com/post/38725722842/blood-sugar <comment><USER2> Devil's advocate: diabetics do not want data logs, they want a better/longer healthy life. I do not have diabetes, but I would rather have an insulin pump that maintains glucose levels by itself than a meter that allows me to monitor them.

And yes, that pump will be imperfect, but it probably will do a better job than you can do yourself, let alone than you will do yourself.

I know that, traditionally, patients used glucose level measurements, stared at the numbers, guessed at what caused them and then tried to correct for similar future events, but AFAIK, that has never been very effective. It did give you some sense of being in control, but that was more an illusion than reality. e.g: your blood sugar is high. Is that because you drank a beer last night, because you went to bed late, because you did not sleep well, because you are stressed about something, because you had a fever two days before, because you took the bus to the train station?

However, except from the truly bloody obvious, that didn't help much maintaining blood sugar levels, unless you lived like a robot. Normal daily schedules simply vary too much to allow you to determine the true cause of atypical blood sugar level variations.

IMO, the time of stand-alone glucose meters has passed, and I do not see how having users process logs will help improve their lives. Reading individual measurements definitely will, but that is so that you can react at short notice, and adjust insulin intake.

<comment><USER3> Thank you.

I've been a diabetic for 14 years and that's exactly how I feel. The only way I can have perfect glucose levels is to live like a robot: wake up every day at the same time, eat exactly the same measured amount of food, check my glucose level every time my alarm beeps and do nothing out of the ordinary.

I'm trying to exercise more and the diabetes is the biggest barrier, I'm like a roller coaster right now.

I don't want to stare at a graph and do even more calculations, I want those calculations done by a machine, which can infuse insuline constantly and use more or less depending on my glucose trend.

There are new technologies out there, like this CGM [1] (continuous glucose monitor) which is very small and wireless (minilink minimed) which IIRC can work with an insulin pump (there is one that's very similar, wireless too, with a reservoir for three days of insulin)

[1] [http://www.diabeteshealth.com/media/images/article_images/50...](http://www.diabeteshealth.com/media/images/article_images/5060.jpg)

The problem? Price. Most insurances won't cover this, the initial purchase is not cheap and the maintenance cost a lot too.

<comment><USER4> > The problem? Price. Most insurances won't cover this, the initial purchase > is not cheap and the maintenance cost a lot too.

I hear that a lot, but I think this may be a cached judgment and not be accounting for recent decreases in price and increases in CGM sensor quality. If you haven't asked your insurance recently, ask again.

<comment><USER3> I live in Spain and have no private insurance. Privates won't cover me because of the pre existing condition, if I had private insurance before being a diabetic they may have covered me, but things like CGMs and pumps always need a fight.

Public insurance won't cover CGMs right now and are hesitant to give out pumps. I checked yesterday again, a Dexcom G4 [1] is around 1.5K, and I would need around 200€ each month on sensors.

I'll probably end buying one out of pocket, but it's not something most people can afford!

[1] [http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8457/8066666840_465937321d_o.j...](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8457/8066666840_465937321d_o.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great post - All the points you raise are valid. I've been in this business for 8 years, seen a dozen products (HW/SW/Apps) go through FDA/CE approval and end up on store shelves. I co-designed the only product at the Apple retail stores that use blood as a user interface. Most engineers/product people in the industry share your frustration. We're keenly aware of the problems, but it's a problem with the ecosystem and hard to solve at a startup scale.

Basically, we're seeing little movement because open data has huge perceived risks and minute upside.

\+ Open Data = Risk: The reason big device companies don't make open APIs for data is that it opens them up to risk. If some 3rd party creates software that uses device data and a patient ends up in a hospital, or worse, who will the family sue? The 2 person startup experimenting with health software, or the multi-billion dollar device company that didn't police every app made with their data? It's slightly irrational, but from the perspective of device company execs, opening data creates huge potential problems and risks with almost no upside. Also, the data privacy laws in the US and Europe scare/confuse many.

\+ Open data attracts almost no customers: Unfortunately, there is no real money making/saving opportunity with data. A lot of promising concepts, but until there is a business model, there won't be a huge amount of focus on this area. Once there is, it will explode.

\+ People won't pay for better products: Most people with diabetes have multiple meters, most of which they receive for free. The device companies work on a razors and blades model so are incented to keep costs down and use retrograde technology. When companies try to make higher quality products, relatively few people buy them.

So the best selling market today is a product that was originally designed to be a disposable meter for use in the 3rd world. It's super cheap and does the job while some of the awesome products you mentioned flounder.

Diabetes, and healthcare generally is a hugely complex market. The web of stakeholders blows the minds of most people who enter it. It will change eventually, but it's extremely difficult to bring a startup mentality to the industry because it usually requires thinking about physical manufacturing AND opening your company up to regulation AND operating in a Byzantine payment system. Possible, but improbable. If you're working on something in this area, we'd love to talk.

<comment><USER6> I get that. I really do, just wanted to vent! My clinic showed me the iPhone one the other day, and honestly, I would add using the 30 pin connector in with the other proprietary cables thing. Which is a shame as it is /almost/ there. Just presumably if your iPhone dies, then you can't test which is a potential problem.

<comment><USER5> No worries, I just wanted to let you know that we vent about the same things! It drives us nuts that we can't move as fast as more consumer focused tech companies.

Re: the iPhone meter - we designed it to have its own battery and display, so even if your iPhone dies, the meter has enough charge to last 10 or so days, and a separate power cord to charge it for more. There was no way we'd tether a person's ability to test to a failing phone battery:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having a great meter with perfect connectivity would not solve the fundamental problem; you need to record and analyze more than just your glucose measurements. You need to record your glucose measurements, your medications (date, time, dosages), your diet, your exercise, and probably other things I haven't thought of yet. I use a simple set of utilities that make it easy to record date, time and tagged data (glucose, carbs, exercise, etc) in plain text files. That leaves me free to write software to analyze my data any way I want.

My goal is to create software that uses Bayesian algorithms to tell me exactly what I need to do (medications, diet, exercise) to keep my glucose measurements nice and flat.

</comment><comment><USER8> Scott Hanselman discusses his diabetes experience occasionally on his blog.

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheSadStateOfDiabetesTechnolog...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheSadStateOfDiabetesTechnologyIn2012.aspx)

<http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HackingDiabetes.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER9> You dont need a whole lot of technology beyond a good glucose meter, unless you are a data freak. I just keep a log on pieces of standard printer paper folded to a convenient size. I note the time, reading, insulin dosage, and anything unusual like pasta or a big desert. The main thing I use the record is to see what kind of corrective dosage I should use if my reading is too high or low. Usually it's less than I would have guessed.

The main thing that works is to maintain a consistent diet, timing of meals, exercise, and insulin dosage. I consulted with a dietician to plan my meals. It was simple and helped a log.

</comment><comment><USER10> Alex, great article. Check out my startup Infometers.com. We are working to solve this problem and open access to the data siloed on glucose monitoring devices everywhere. Feel free to reach out :) Would love to chat more

</comment><comment><USER11> For about 2 years I had to keep an old XP box in the corner just to boot it up every 90 days get the data off my wife's MiniMed meter and pump. They didn't support anything newer than XP until 2011, let alone any hope of not needing Windows.

Great article.

</comment><comment><USER12> What I would like to see is an integrated system where the a continuous monitoring device comes with the insulin pump and communicates with it automatically. I want open data as well and good software, but more importantly, I'd like to have a device that learns from my habits and recommends adjustments automatically. It would save me the hassle of having to pore through my glucose readings and think about everything every 1-2 weeks, which is what's required of me now to maintain my health (and which I'm negligent on).

And I'd like my insurance to cover it, but that's an entirely different story.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have a look at this one.

<http://mydario.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> @russel - I think for Type 1 diabetes it would be nice to get a bit more data, I was on continuous monitoring for a week and it was incredibly helpful to see a bit more information than 4 readings per day.

I think with diabetes, I certainly want the data to be adaptive beyond "constant diet, timing of meals" etc.

@j_s - Yes, I think he makes some fantastic points.

@inetsee - Yes, lots more variables than BG readings, but getting that right is a good start.

@axsar - Thanks, will have a look, although it still relies on proprietary data cable.

<comment><USER10> hi, website does not list all the devices :). I will update it over the holidays downtime. Can you please send me an email with your meter name ( i think said you use the contour USB?)

<comment><USER10> firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The diabetes market is already being disrupted, by Dexcom, which makes continuous sensors, and which appears to be iterating every few years. You calibrate them every 12 hours or so, they last a week, and they give a sample every 5 minutes or so, at a cost of about $600+$100/week of consumables. The software isn't great, but it gets the job done and it'll download data over an included USB cable and export to CSV if you just want a spreadhsheet.

</comment><comment><USER10> Digitizing this data, making it accesible vs. having it as a printer paper folder, is the first step. Once we have the data, we need to make decisions based on it. Computers are a lot better analyzing 1000s data points from multiple vitals. Main problem is the device connectivity fragmentation.... at Infometers we are working to solve that problem. Reason I say this, send me a names of the diabetes monitor you use - I might already support it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Related: [ Anti-apnea devices that are not user-serviceable ] [http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/06/if-we-told- yo...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/06/if-we-told-you.php)

</comment><comment><USER15> This post is laughably naive. Get out of your bubble. Very very very few diabetics (less than 1% is my guess) care about any of this data. All they want is a simple, cheap, quick, and painless glucose meter.

<comment><USER10> i think that's thinking inside the BOX or being satisfied with status quo. Most costs/pains of diabetes are from mistakes in care (~75%). The patient manages their condition day to day themselves (99%). Studies have shown that we can catch complications and improve lives by analyzing patient's glucometer data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I too hate PDF, let me say that a developer could take a PDF parser and since the PDF report is going to be static, it should be easy to extract the information.

Not that it's right, but it's possible.

<comment><USER17> As a developer with diabetes, rather than battle with the terrible software that comes with each meter (or at least, each one I've tried in the last 10 years), it's simply easier for me to enter the result into an app[1] on my phone. Yes, I'd rather not have an extra step, but it's so quick (a few seconds) and I always have my phone with me, that it isn't really that much of an inconvenience.

This way way, the process stays the same independent of what meter I use, the data is easily exportable and I don't need to use Accu-Check 360°, which is dire.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wonggordon...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wonggordon.bgmonitor_donate&feature=more_from_developer&write_review=true#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEwMiwiY29tLndvbmdnb3Jkb24uYmdtb25pdG9yX2RvbmF0ZSJd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> <https://deebo.com/> \- was a cool project that aimed to do just that. I'm not sure why they stopped, but perhaps they have some findings...

</comment><comment><USER19> research bitter melon</comment>


The most complete terrain map of the Earth's surface has been published. - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8126197.stm

<comment><USER2> I feel like a troll even suggesting that this isn't an amazing accomplishment, but did anybody else do a double-take when they read:

"For the Aster measurements, local elevation was mapped with each point just 30m apart. "

That's an impressive number of points for the entire earth's surface, it just doesn't strike me as being particularly remarkable in 2009, and I'm surprised that it is the _most complete_ terrain map.

I suspect I'm revealing my supreme ignorance of the state of GIS here, but I'd be interested in hearing what other people's thoughts are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it say where it is published? I can't seem to find it.

<comment><USER4> I googled a bit and found this : <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-103>

<comment><USER5> Their interface is pretty unusable. They need a "I want maps" button.

<comment><USER3> Par for the course I am afraid. I've had to get ahold of NASA data before for some of the graphics work I've done in the past, and it's always a headache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The resulting Global Digital Elevation Map covers 99% of the Earth's surface, and will be free to download and use._

Who'll be first to integrate this, google maps or bing, or somebody else? Who ever it is, I can't wait.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone have a link to the map site? I've checked nasa.gov but no luck.

<comment><USER4> [From the link in the another comment I have posted here]

 _For visualizations of the new Aster topographic data, visit:<http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20090629.html>

Data users can download the Aster global digital elevation model at: <https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/~wist/api/imswelcome> and <http://www.gdem.aster.ersdac.or.jp> _

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, a better way to expose and consume this information would be highly appreciated.

No, NASA is not user friendly.

<comment><USER9> Usually true, but their World Wind software is only unfriendly compared too Google Earth or MS Earth programs. <http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/></comment></comment>


I built an Excel add-in with web tech - <AUTHOR> https://chr15m.github.io/how-i-built-an-excel-add-in-to-export-html-tables.html <comment><USER2> Sounds cool. I have the reverse issue. Lots of information in Atlassian Confluence tables that I want in Excel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you tell me more about this use-case - are those Confluence tables public and can I see an example?

The basic use-case is to take an HTML table in a page and give you CSV data in your clipboard, correct?

Have you looked for browser extensions that do this?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info on that capture tool. Unfortunately, it isn't allowed in our controlled space. And the Confluence data I have isn't public, so out of luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious as to why the choice to use Wisp instead of ClojureScript.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to get that very fast start up time for the users of the plugin, which means making everything as small as possible. The Wisp code compiled down to 8kb.

I'm a heavy ClojureScript user in general and this was a conscious choice on this project because I am optimising for "very small".

<comment><USER3> Interesting, thanks for explanation</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 8 (soon) available for download - <AUTHOR> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy?ocid=GA8_O_WOL_Hero_Home_FPP_Null

<comment><USER2> I've been a MSDN/Technet junkie for most of my professional life, so maybe I got this wrong and just haven't noticed before...

But is this the first time Microsoft actually put up a _download page_ for their OS. A simple page where people can just go, buy and download stuff, without the need for any special MSDN/Technet account?

If so, that's both cool and about time.

<comment><USER3> Thank Apple for making them offer what their competition offers for half the price.

I'm a Mac and PC person ... I'd download this if it was similarly priced to the OS X downloads.

<comment><USER4> Windows isn't released as often. So in the end, it's cheaper.

(And Apple doesn't need to make money from their OS, Microsoft does)

<comment><USER5> Not to mention that this is a major update unlike the minor addons that Apple use to justify an upgrade. I would live very happy with snow leopard, the only reason I upgrade is because Apple force us in order to keep developing on latest iOS devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title of this is misleading. It says "available to download" but the link says "coming soon" (when you click on the price).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I didn't actually click the Download button, since I have no incentive to buy Windows 8 right now.

<comment><USER7> The release version is available through TechNet subscriber downloads

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just purchased it, and it appears to be downloading now. Note that I had pre-applied for a reduced price offer since I had just purchased a new Windows 7 PC. The URL I used was through here: <https://www.windowsupgradeoffer.com/en-US/MyOrder>

It is currently downloading through a "Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant" program. This program took all of my information and charged my credit card, and is downloading the files as I write this. ETA 15 minutes total.

Screenshot: <http://cl.ly/image/2t3T2M261P2a>

<comment><USER9> Ah.. yes.... the ever-reliable windows upgrade offer dot com. Why, I think I _shall_ plug my CC into whatever app it downloads.

<comment><USER10> For those wondering, it really is an official MS-owned website. <http://www.whoismind.com/whois/windowsupgradeoffer.com.html> It just has a terrible name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They should sell windows 8 (vm) in the Mac App Store :)

<comment><USER12> Well obviously Microsoft wouldn't want to give a cut to Apple but the underlying idea is not so bad. Parallels Desktop and VMware (virtualization software for the OSX) already include an easy Windows purchase option in their installation process. I'd love to purchase a 'Windows 8 for Mac' edition directly from Microsoft if it means they'll have drivers and everything supported. I'm waiting for proper Windows HiDPI support in Bootcamp for my Macbook Pro retina as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While I am a *nix fan, I do wish good luck to MS! Ballsy move.

<comment><USER14> I don't need on my desktop, but I can totally see my next laptop to be a laptop/tablet mix if the OS can really run great on both mode it would be fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A very nice looking site, ruined by 135px tall persistent header.

</comment><comment><USER16> 1366 × 768 screen resolution

So this OS is specifically designed around 16:9?

Any ideas how well it would work on a 4:3 monitor if at all?

<comment><USER17> Your screen's aspect ratio doesn't really matter. Desktop apps work like they used to. "Modern" apps expand to fit the space given. The minimum resolution for such apps is 1024x768, which is 4:3.

<comment> simba-hiiipower yup, minimum to run modern apps: 1024 x 768

minimum to run modern apps with snap view (1/3 | 2/3 side-by-side): 1366 × 768

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe you should rename the title to 'Windows 8 available for purchase'? Just sayin..But a pretty good bargain hard to beat I say!!

<comment><AUTHOR> I renamed the title, but with a slightly different wording, since you can't, in fact, even buy it yet.

<comment><USER19> It seems that you can buy the upgrade version through "Windows Upgrade Offer" right now, as some other users are reporting. I can confirm that I am able to download the upgrade assistant with my code, but I don't have access to the laptop I am upgrading right now, so I can't actually run it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks like the download version is an upgrade not a full retail license.

It doesn't make it clear whether the 'shipped' version is a full stand alone thing or not.

I have an existing boxed copy of Windows 7 Retail that is installed on a PC. I'd like to install Windows 8 on there but free up the Windows 7 license to put in a VM or on another PC.

<comment><USER20> > Or you can get Windows 8 Pro shipped to you for $69.99

That's the full version as far as I can tell (and you can't get it yet via that link).

Also, the "upgrade" version only works for 64-bit versions of installed media... If you're running a 32-bit Windows version, you'll have to wait for the full version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice. I like the colorful Windows 7 box on the right hand side.

But two things are bugging me: The "Download Pro for .." link at the bottom of the page is not working (the "<http://> is missing the "h"), and the system requirements "Internet Access (fees may apply)" sounds too legalese.

<comment><USER22> I really doubt that do any of Microsoft employee really care about the page.Seems they even don't check whether the page is functioning properly or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just remember this:

1) Escape doesn't bring up the shutdown menu 2) Windows key doesn't 3) Mouse to the left, top or bottom doesn't 4) Mouse to the start menu doesnt

Only to the right will you find the menu. Why a simple button couldn't have been added defies me.

<comment><USER4> The old alt+f4 in desktop works too (or at least worked in all dev builds I tried. I rebooted a lot so I just used win+d, alt+f4, scroll to the last option and pressed enter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does this offer a full ISO image to burn? Or is this an in-place upgrade type of a deal?

[http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to- wind...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8)

> Can I upgrade from a 32-bit version of Windows to a 64-bit version of > Windows 8?

> Yes, but you can't do this using Upgrade Assistant. If your PC has a 64-bit > capable processor (CPU) but is currently running a 32-bit version of > Windows, you can install a 64-bit version of Windows 8, but you'll need to > buy Windows 8 as a DVD.

I guess not, otherwise you'd be able to just burn a full version DVD and boot from that.

</comment><comment><USER24> The text in the download button isn't vertically centered. Not a good start: <http://cl.ly/image/2B3K3J3u2r0C>

<comment><USER25> I don't see that. Text is centered when I look at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Lately all Microsoft sites seem to break in Chrome for me. <http://imgur.com/DLV4m>

<comment><USER27> I'd start by looking at the extensions you've got installed. You seem to have a bunch (and also a custom skin?). 413 is a strange error code to be getting. I would try disabling all extensions and see if the problem goes away.

If that doesn't do it, try clearing cookies, as corrupt oversized cookies might cause this (or so some random forum claims).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So the user friendly statement on why RT can't run old apps is this:

"Refers to programs built for mouse and keyboard that run in the classic Windows desktop environment."

<http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/compare>

Scroll down to the "* * *"

</comment><comment><USER29> That's a really nice looking box. I'm tempted to buy a physical copy just for the packaging.

</comment><comment><USER30> Seemingly unavailable to buy, at least in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER31> $39 should be the standard price... Not the special upgrade deal. I am a Linux/unix user, but anyways; Success to them

<comment><USER32> I think it should be $52

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Upgrade Assistant isn't available for everybody or just my country? I'm from Brazil.

<comment><USER34> It shouldn't be available for anybody yet. The Windows 8 launch event is in another 30 minutes in New York, and official sales don't start until tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is there any real reason to if I just use my Windows PC to play games?

<comment><USER36> There are certain games that will not run on Windows 8. The only one I've personally run into was Grand Theft Auto 4. I had Windows 8 installed on my desktop, could not get the game to run, and moved back to Windows 7.

<comment><USER16> I assume this is a temporary thing and that either MS or the game vendor will patch it soon enough.

<comment><USER36> The trouble with GTA seemed to be in the Securom DRM. With GTA5 on the way and knowing the business Securom operates in, I wouldn't be surprised if a patch never came.

However, all of the other games I've tried have worked with Windows 8 on my laptop. It does make me wonder about the future of companies like Securom in a Windows 8 world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wired Interviews Bill Gates (1996) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFFlO7yBIBM&feature=youtu.be&t=1660 <comment><AUTHOR> "There will be no content site with 4 billion revenue in my lifetime — get real."

Netflix 2019: 20bn.</comment>


SF residents buy boulders, place them on sidewalk to thwart homeless tents - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/SF-residents-buy-boulders-place-them-on-sidewalk-14464233.php <comment><USER2> It sounds cruel -- but I suspect those of us who have to live with used syringes and human feces within a block of where we live can empathize.

<comment><USER3> Participate in local government for needle swap programs and safe facilities then.

ST is weirdly mega feudal

<comment><USER4> [https://www.sfaf.org/services/syringe-access- disposal/](https://www.sfaf.org/services/syringe-access-disposal/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lady in the vid calls it anti-homeless architecture , but I always understood it just as hostile architecture - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture)

<comment><USER4> Interesting that sloped window sills are considered hostile. They're important for preventing rot and water damage, regardless of size and type of building, but in modern construction too expensive. There was a good article from an historical architect I read some years ago lamenting how architects no longer consider small details like that anymore, even for projects where such expense wouldn't be an obstacle.

I was visiting and walking through a Boston neighborhood earlier this year and noticed a very old brownstone (or whatever the Boston equivalent is) that had recently been remodeled on the ground floor. There were two windows, one original and one newly built. The original had a sloped window sill of 4-5 inches but the new sill, the same width, was level. Even with aluminum window casings I imagine the new window will eventually begin to leak sooner or later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How cities differ.

Where I live, boulders are also fashionable this year, but their goal is clearly to block the way for cars. Nicely located so the pavement or lawn is free, but a 2m wide car can't drive onto it from the street.

Who's the Evil Other.

</comment><comment><USER7> Jesus Christ. DIY hostile city design.</comment>


A disciplined shared-memory model for parallel state-driven algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://simonhf.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/libsxe-shared-memory-and-parallel-state-driven-algorithms/

<comment><USER2> Maybe you can have an implementation of shared-memory model that is "predictable" (transactional). But I failed to see how that solves the synchronization problem shared-memory model exposed to at large-scale system.

On the other hand, GPGPU community has an interesting idea to this problem. The idea is to have a memory hierarchy and at the bottom of the level, you have a homogeneous continuous memory space which is painfully slow and have strong consistency. When you walk up the hierarchy, you will have faster, smaller, local memory that have weaker consistency.

Disclaimer: I haven't got time around to read the paper throughly, it is just my two cents.</comment>


N. K. Jemisin's Dream Worlds - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/27/nk-jemisins-dream-worlds <comment><USER2> Be warned: the article contains some (imho) significant spoilers for "The Fifth Season", the first book of the "Broken Earth" trilogy.

I read the Broken Earth books and thoroughly enjoyed them (especially the first). I found Jemisin's worldbuilding and protagonists writing to be very compelling.

I strongly recommend to read at least the Fifth Season to see if her writings are to your taste.

The fact that some would object that she is a Sci-fi writer seems... rather reductive to me at the least. Sure Jemisin does not write "hard" SF, and the Broken Earth has some strong fantasy tropes. But so did Frank Herbert and Ursula Le Guin, two among the most revered writers of the genre.

[EDIT] I should not even say that she does not write hard SF, since I did not read her other books (yet). I should have kept it at "The Broken Earth trilogy is not hard SF"

<comment><USER3> Reading a whole book written in second person narrative got really annoying after a while and I couldn't finish it even though I thought there were some interesting ideas there.

<comment><USER4> It's not actually the whole book, she uses it as a literary device and explaining it fully would spoil some pretty cool things. The narrative form switches throughout the book, and I agree it's annoying a little bit, but the dissociated feeling it gives you is actually her intention.

The fifth season definitely is a series that makes you feel uncomfortable, but I suppose not all stories can (or should) be comfortable.

<comment><USER5> Second this. It's not done merely as a superficial narrative gimmick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A while ago, she was on The Ezra Klein Show (a podcast) to basically play through live a world building example. Pretty fun!

Overcast: [https://overcast.fm/+QLhXLnUOw](https://overcast.fm/+QLhXLnUOw)

Apple podcasts: [https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1081584611?ct=podlink&m...](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1081584611?ct=podlink&mt=2&i=1000418571825)

Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xyFQhbsjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xyFQhbsjQ)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's worth noting that all three of her _Broken Earth_ trilogy won Hugo awards.

It's not uncommon for series to win like that (getting a Hugo award for the first book means people will start the series, and since the awards are popular voting having people read your book is half the struggle).

I think the first two books (The Fifth Season and the Stone Sky) were great, but I didn't love the final book. I think Ann Leckie's _Provenance_ should have won that year - it's in the (Hugo award winning!) Ancillary Justice universe, and deals with lots of issues around AI that I think many at HN would enjoy.

And as for the dead comments complaining that her winning is some kind of conspiracy because it's not hard SF: Fantasy has long won Hugo awards.

Also: (a) go read it - it's got a system of magic that is as hard as any magical faster than light technology in a space opera, and (b) Gaiman won with _American Gods_ and _The Graveyard Book_. _The Yiddish Policemen's Union_ won in 2008. _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ won.

<comment><USER8> I thought Provenance was a lot weaker than the rest of the Ancillary series. It was still good though.

The 2018 Hugo novel field was REALLY good. There wasn't a klunker in the group. My favorite was Kim Stanley Robinson's "New York 2140" but it was a very hard call.

<comment><USER9> +1 for KSR "NY 2140", everyone should read that book

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An interview with Brandon Sanderson peaked my interest in Jemisin. He said something to the effect that she is trying to move Fantasy into a new direction. At the time I read it, I had finished the Malazan Book of the Fallen, which in itself is a large departure from High Fantasy, and was in search of something other than a loosely-defined magic system that gets protagonists out of every tough situation.

Jemisin provided what I was looking for: second-person narratives, magic systems that are defined and have (loose) roots in science, plot twists, and great character development. It's also chock full of moral ambiguity. Her books are also short. After reading MBotF, I felt like I ran a reading marathon with books general being 1000+ pages. I wanted someone who could say more with less.

Jemisin listed Octavia Butler as a strong influence. So, I read the Parable books and am now reading Fledgling. The influence is clear. Butler's books are brilliant and so different for their time. Her name is really not mentioned enough.

I have to mention Joe Abercrombie as another author who is moving Fantasy away from magic-driven plots. Brilliant author.

[EDIT: first-person should have been second-person]

</comment><comment><USER11> I was super happy to see this article when it ran. An author profile in the New Yorker is a big damn deal in literary circles, and it's something that doesn't happen super often for folks working in SF or fantasy -- especially if the work hasn't transitioned to a screen.

I will also shared this, since it's the sort of thing I like to hear (when it's true) about writers and artists: She's super nice in person. My wife and I got to meet her on the JoCo Cruise several years ago.

</comment><comment><USER12> I read the Broken Earth trilogy a few years ago-- didn't remember it had won the Hugo award for all 3 books, and don't really understand why it would have won, unless that was a particularly weak couple of year?

It is a moderately decent fantasy series, but the writing is kind of clunky.

Looking at the 2017 Hugo, I'd say Cixian Liu's "Death's End" was a much better novel than "The Obelisk Gate", and would have given it to that book.

For the 2016 Hugo I've read 3 of the finalist("Fifth Season", "Ancillary Mercy", "Seveneves"), but I don't think any of them were all that great... guess just a weak year.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's a podcast where she does a bit of worldbuilding: [https://overcast.fm/+QLhVvI_Pw](https://overcast.fm/+QLhVvI_Pw)

</comment><comment><USER14> Broken Earth was a great Trilogy. I appreciate how fast she writes. No patience for waiting years between books anymore. She was recommended to me since I was a fan of Butler and Bioware games. There's a lot of overlapping Dragon Age feels in the series and I think she wrote a Mass Effect novel. Her twitch is accessible if you want to ask her questions. At least a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER15> I absolutely love Jemisin's books. The City We Became is really fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER16> I tried the first book in the Broken Earth series, but eventually put it down because the language was - imo - a bit too preachy and self-indulgent.

</comment><comment><USER17> Too melodramatic for my taste. Couldn't connect with anyone of her protagonists - so I stopped reading her after The Shadowed sun

</comment><comment><USER18> It appears from her twitter account that she has done a few charity fundraiser tiltify streams. Including one yesterday. I don't know what the right amount is for such a thing but it seems a bit low to me.

<comment><USER19> How much did you raise when you did it?

<comment><USER18> The point I was trying to make was clearly lost, as not a single person donated in the time since this was posted.

Although a bunch of people clearly feel they won some moral victory by downvoting me. Bravo, HN. Just stellar.

As to your... tone.

I did quite a bit of volunteer work for a nonprofit for five years. I gave them, as it turned out when I did the math later, about 10% of my free time, worked with thousands of other people in that time (pretty good for an introvert). We raised around a quarter million, not counting the value of public resources and tens of thousands of volunteer hours we relied upon.

I'm fine walking through the gate you just erected. How 'bout you?

<comment><USER19> Perhaps a call to action would be better communication then, rather than your clumsy attempt to raise awareness. You came across as condescending and critical. So well done you in your volunteer work, but perhaps work on your communication style if you were actually looking to promote donating to the cause instead of criticising someone else's achievement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>