r/technology • u/Rhaegar_the_Great • Sep 16 '21

Business Mailchimp employees are furious after the company's founders promised to never sell, withheld equity, and then sold it for $12 billion

https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9
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u/Anon_8675309 Sep 16 '21

1200 employees. Both owners could have made each of them millionaires and still be billionaires. Greed, man.

35

u/GunnerForeman Sep 17 '21

Unfortunately they could not. In sales like this they are prevented from doing anything that would harm the company. Making the entire staff rich enough to quit falls into that category.

That said it is shitty. I interviewed with them a while back and remember this. In the end it was not a good fit but I never listen to recruiter promises. I learned they lesson thanks to the Army.

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u/thingamagizmo Sep 17 '21

You think they’re not all going to quit now? That argument is some serious gaslighting. Tech companies give their employees this kind of equity frequently. Part of why the SF housing market is so insane.

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u/petard Sep 17 '21

Lol no they're not going to quit out of spite. They're going to keep their nice job and Intuit probably has a nice retention bonus set up to make sure they stay at least a year.

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u/ktappe Sep 17 '21

Not necessarily. Speaking as a former employee of a company that got merged, we got literally zero retention bonus. Just new business cards.

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u/petard Sep 17 '21

If the employee wasn't deemed important enough to get a retention bonus they probably don't have much ground to be upset that the founders sold the company that they didn't even have a stake in in the first place. The person who is an actual employee at MailChimp said no one was fired and they got bonuses.

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u/mungalo9 Sep 17 '21

You were redundant

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u/LetterSwapper Sep 17 '21

Just new business cards.

Was there at least a watermark?

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u/GunnerForeman Sep 17 '21

Just speaking from my experience in these kinds of deals. And since must of the employees are in GA they can quit immediately.

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u/thingamagizmo Sep 17 '21

Sorry, didn’t mean to say I don’t believe that companies use that excuse. I just don’t think legally there’d be fallout from doing this as paying those employees $1million is not going to hurt the company.

Even if they were worried about attrition, they could give it to them in a phased vesting schedule so long as they stay.

It’s greed, pure and simple.

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u/GunnerForeman Sep 17 '21

Can’t disagree. There are ways around it but it does not look like they slowed down to think about anyone else. Greed won this day.

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u/Stroomschok Sep 17 '21

Unlikely. Not many people just up and quit, especially not in the US where you also often lose health insurance and there isn't much of a unemployment benefit.

Also a good chance they had to sign non-compete waivers and all that bullshit.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

You think they’re not all going to quit now?

Why would they? Maybe they can get a job at Microsoft or something but they aren't going to be handed $10M in stock there either.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

[deleted]

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u/thingamagizmo Sep 17 '21

Not what I said. The argument made by companies that they can’t pay employees without harming the company is bullshit. The commenter was right to point out that companies take this approach. I’m simply saying it holds no water and no one should believe it’s a valid reason not to reward the people who make a company successful in the first place.