alt Hacker NewsI swear this is what's so risky about AI startups, they've completely changed the risk/reward calculus that we all used to be okay with.
You join a company, are granted ISOs/RSUs/etc, and they matter at some point when a liquidity event happens.
Now the liquidity events are "acquihireasitions", the execs and senior AI/ML eng get buyouts to go to a new company -- everyone else: regular eng, designers, PMs, marketers, recruiting, etc. everyone else is just left with nothing.
I wouldn't join an AI startup unless I was on the ML side, and I'm not: I'm just a "regular ass product engineer" so screw me I guess.
This is just not true.
Everyone who had stock (including common stock) at character.ai was bought out at the $2.6bn price: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-hires-charact...
The buyout included guaranteed payouts for people who had unvested stock for 2 years post-acquisition.
These transactions are opaque and confusing, but employees are generally not being fucked over here.