Yeah, thats what I said above in my first response to goofyballer.

From as far as I got in the article it sounds like AMT was designed to screw devs...

Hah, sort-of true. But also sort-of not true. I think it makes sense in a lot of ways. It's kind of a nice way around someone taking advantage of too many loop holes / deductions to avoid paying tax.

And the reality is that the people with stock options like we're talking about that are triggering significant AMT payments are part of the wealthiest x% of America. As in the wealthiest 5%, give or take a few percentage points. I'm not feeling particularly sorry for them.

But, of course, its pretty ridiculous that you can be saddled with a massive tax bill on something that has a decent chance of being worthless.

That's so bizarre, taxing unrealized gains is not a thing.

That reminds me, I asked about the tax implications of getting illiquid RSUs at this company and the recruiter said that, technically, the vesting is conditioned both on a.) the normal 4 year vesting schedule, AND b.) a liquidity event happening (IPO/buyout). So, I guess technically they don't grant you the shares until you can sell them, and that way you don't have to pay tax on the grants (until you can actually sell enough to pay for the tax).

Not clear if that means that, if you left before a liquidity event, you could not take your shares with you (obv a massive tax hit would be involved with accepting the full amount of the shares).

Well ****, I can't find any reference to what I thought happened. What is clear is the only thing that shows up on my taxes last year was getting rid of my Apple stock. The Carta site with my options doesn't give me any more information, and none of my papers have anything about it either. I could have sworn I had to pay another chunk of money for those options after the grant but I can find no reference to it so I must have imagined it or something. Sorry for the confusion.

Exercising options can be equivalent to realizing gains, from what I remember, even if you don't sell the stock. I think founder's shares get around that or something.

I feel like someone put me on that super-secret thing where you post but nobody sees your posts.

I see (and appreciate) them!

You're a mod. You're probably just saying that to keep me going.

jj,

You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggonnit people like you!

Oh man I was gonna say i see them as well but I too am a mod. Conspiracy confirmed


More realistically tho, tax talk gonna lose me pretty quick

Why are there all these blank posts itt? Weird bug.

Really? I'd think it's pretty relevant for programmers in general given that so many of us work at companies that offer options as a benefit.


I filled out the AMT worksheet and it appears like I don't have a lot of headroom for additional, non-1040 income before it would kick in. I don't have anything particularly wild in my tax returns so I imagine this is probably generally the case for lots of Bay Area programmers

otoh, jj, do you know how shares are valued for tax purposes? Like, when our company gets investment, we have the investment valuation (which is higher) and then the 409A valuation (which is lower and where the strike price comes from). If the "fair market value" of the shares I'm receiving on exercise was determined to be the 409A valuation, it's possible the tax hit would be negligible, because the strike price of option grants I've gotten has stayed pretty low. If the value was the share price we trumpet to investors and all that, there's no way I can exercise, it'd be adding six figures to my income on the AMT worksheet.

Hah, I was really just trying to make fun of Suzzer a little bit with my first post about not being seen.

I 100% agree that this is something most developers should know and care about in the current market. It's crazy to me that people don't learn about it. But that's another rant.

Standard disclaimer that I am not an accountant (and definitely not a US expert), but yes its the 409A valuation that is used for tax purposes. My understanding is that the investment valuation isn't used because its not apples-to-apples. Investors are paying for preferred shares with at least some amount of protection/upside that common shares don't have.

Not relevant for me atm, so I guess it's easy to save my mindspace right now.

jj,

Your posts on this topic have been exactly on point and I almost made a post saying everything you are saying is excellent but I've been at a client site all day and traveling so not really able to post it!

Suzzer, are you excited about the next few days? AWS should be announcing a bunch of **** and I bet a good chunk of it is related to serverless and new features/services around that.

Lol we're already getting slack flooded. Dynamo transactions was the most popular so far

I just saw this: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws...rvices+Blog%29

It's crazy to me that this is a thing now.

So far there's that micro VM thing that I don't really think we need yet.

My boss is there. I'm sure she'll come back all fired up about various things.

Told DBAM I had an offer from another company and that I kinda want to get the ball rolling in that department, even if we're still finding a team for me to work on. First thing the DBAM recruiter asked was, "what are the offer details?"

Curious what you guys think about this. Following advice from things like this article:

My situation is a little different, in that I've (hopefully not to my detriment) been open about who I've been interviewing with, so they know the company, but I think the other company is also known for paying well so I don't think DBAM should assume they can lowball me.

But anyway, accordingly, I declined to share the offer details from Interesting Large Private Startup and said I didn't think it would be fair to ILPS or DBAM to share each other's offers back and forth, and wanted to focus more on making the best deal we could. Recruiter said OK.



But, I guess I don't totally understand the theory behind doing things this way. Is it that sharing company A's offer with company B tells B the ballpark you're operating in, and erases the possibility that their initial offer is significantly better than A's?

Because otherwise, I would imagine it being a good thing (even if a little crass) to keep giving each company the others' offer info to get them to outbid each other. But maybe that settles you into a range too easily where they say, "eh, if we just match the other company then maybe that's all we have to do".

I have very little relevant experience, but back in the first dot com days in my only vaguely similar negotiation I was open with the company I preferred. I said I had a higher paying offer from another company, but I'd rather work here if you can come close. They offered about 10% less and I was happy with that.

If you don't think DBAM is gonna come in higher than ILPS, I don't see much downside to sharing ILPS offer - maybe be a little vague about the details.

I'm not sure where I'd expect DBAM to come in. ILPS's initial offer came in higher than I thought it would. Like, I thought they would present me with a tough choice between illiquid stock versus cash now, instead they were like "hey here's 50k on top of what you already make, plus our private RSUs".

If DBAM comes in lower, I can tell them if it's not competitive.

I'm used to the terminal on Macs but may soon find myself in a Windows shop, is there anything better than Putty out there for SSHing into remote boxes from Windows?