Think of annual profit generated by company as a fixed pie. or total market as a giant pie.
Question is how to slice a pie between Labor and Capital?
Now we know that IT is a growing market, and next year pie will be bigger, much bigger. That's why Capital needs Labor to cooperate along and work as efficiently as possible to capture maximum slice of pie for the Corporation next year and the year after.
That's why they give variable compensation and give sense of ownership. Just by giving out 0.1% of shares, Capital is able to extract max value form Labor and make their pie grow at 30-40% per year.
Absolutely killer deal for Capital.
That's how zuckerberg et al become billionaires, while employees who created the money making machine are mere (multi)millionaires.
you join stage B startup and get 0.01% of company as ISO options, but you do the 100% of the work required to make product and grow company from $10M valuation to $10B valuation. Three orders of magnitude growth for Capital, while Labor get 1/1000 of that growth
it is zero sum when it comes to Labor vs Capital relationship.
Counter example to your claim: if giving out RSUs is not zero-sum, then why don't Companies give me as many RSUs as possible, since they are not losing anything and it is not zero-sum game, by your definition?
That is a purposefully bad take of "my definition"
Sure the RSUs available today are zero sum. The company has a finite value today, and thus your share of the compensation available today is a zero sum game across every participant in the corporation.
But your compensation _over time_ is not zero sum, as the value of the company can grow, both within the current market and as the current market grows _by your own definition._
Question to you: why shareholders are giving out RSUs in the first place? Are they doing it out of kindness of their heart?
If you look at the whole picture, you will see that “to align employees with company goals” is simply “to incentivize employees to make shareholders richer”.
Shareholders usually own 90+% of the stock, while employees ownership is in single percentages at best. That includes early employees.
The deal for Capital is very simple: give away few percents of stock and make Labor grind tirelessly to increase value of Capital by orders of magnitude.
Percentage wise everybody wins, both Labor and Capital (so called not zero sum game), in absolute terms however the distribution tells a different story.
Another counter-example:
Imagine startup fails or is acquired at decreased valuation: will be it zero sum or not?
Well, employees options are wiped out first, VC capital gets first claims to money pool, Founders have second claims after VCs (or would have made liquid in separate deals), while regular employees are the ones who screwed.
You can't say that some outcomes are zero sum and other outcomes are not. By the very fact that there are different possible outcomes proves it is not a zero sum game.
> Imagine startup fails or is acquired at decreased valuation: will be it zero sum or not?
It's not zero sum, the total sum changed over time as the company lost value. Non zero sum doesn't mean "value only goes up"
> Percentage wise everybody wins, both Labor and Capital (so called not zero sum game), in absolute terms however the distribution tells a different story.
Thank you for conceding my point. It is a non zero sum game. There's an argument to be made about that employees are not given their fair share of RSUs or options, but that is a wholly separate argument/debate and you weaken your point by trying to say it's a zero sum game.
Question is how to slice a pie between Labor and Capital?
Now we know that IT is a growing market, and next year pie will be bigger, much bigger. That's why Capital needs Labor to cooperate along and work as efficiently as possible to capture maximum slice of pie for the Corporation next year and the year after.
That's why they give variable compensation and give sense of ownership. Just by giving out 0.1% of shares, Capital is able to extract max value form Labor and make their pie grow at 30-40% per year.
Absolutely killer deal for Capital.
That's how zuckerberg et al become billionaires, while employees who created the money making machine are mere (multi)millionaires.
you join stage B startup and get 0.01% of company as ISO options, but you do the 100% of the work required to make product and grow company from $10M valuation to $10B valuation. Three orders of magnitude growth for Capital, while Labor get 1/1000 of that growth