Skype was Private Equity, not normal VC/founder/team terms.
very rarely do founders fuck their employees over, relative to how employees are treated in most places. Founders vs. VCs or Founders vs. PE is more common, but founders at a late-stage company should be a lot more educated and resourced.
It's mainly at the idea to startup to series A stage where people are fairly universally honorable, at least among the top people.
The comments on the "how much did you earn as an early employee from an exit?" thread seem to indicate otherwise. Very few people ever saw their stock options amount to anything.
There are two factors in that thread. First, most companies never achieve a meaningfully successful exit (so those reports will be "my options amounted to nothing" and people will freely share that). Second, in the cases where they did, the employees who did well are somewhat less likely to be reading HN and (I surmise) vastly less likely to talk about it.
I had typed up my experiences over three exits in that thread, posted it and deleted it a few minutes later as it didn't add enough to the discussion relative to what it revealed about me.
You're getting into 'no true scotsman' territory here. Everyone in the film industry is very nice and decent as well, until you run into someone who isn't.
very rarely do founders fuck their employees over, relative to how employees are treated in most places. Founders vs. VCs or Founders vs. PE is more common, but founders at a late-stage company should be a lot more educated and resourced.
It's mainly at the idea to startup to series A stage where people are fairly universally honorable, at least among the top people.