15% seems fairly standard. Two of my 3 employers offered that. I agree it’s practically free money. Especially nowadays. 20 years ago there was a week or a bit more between the price being set and you actually having the shares and being able to sell them. Now it’s maybe 2 days, so even less risk
Boardroom Miscellaneous Thread
- Thread starter Skoop
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Advanced mode is to short the stock in a different account as soon as the price is set is in the ESPP. Then you have no capital tied up. Almost certainly not worth the worth the effort though.
Whatever company my employer uses, there can be a .... lag between when you buy, when the stock actually shows up so when you sell might not be as immediate as one would hope.
Yeah like my Fortune 500 company does it too at a 5% discount, but you put into it with paycheck deductions over a 6 month period and then at the 6 months you get the stock. So it is like a 10% CD essentially with tiny risk.
It's deducted from our paycheque every paycheque, and then the purchases happen I believe quarterly.
It's very rigid and structured, to ensure no insider trading allegations.
Also guardbanded where I work by blackout dates when you can't sell. That increases my risk substantially.
At my prior employers that had a 15% discount on ESPP, I did it to the max allowed, and it always worked out well. 5% feels a little stingy, and kind of annoying to have to do the tax form work for such a small amount, but probably still worth it if you don't mind the little bit of extra work in TurboTax or whatever. If there were blackout periods on when you could sell, then I probably wouldn't do it for only a 5% discount.
It's still potentially worth it if it works like mine where the price is sent on the lower of the starting and ending prices for the 6 month period. If it's rising you get 5% + all the gains of the last 6 months. If it's falling, hopefully the 5% covers the couple days till you can dump it.
Unfortunately with the current stock market, who knows what direction it's going to go in 2 days, much less 6 months.
We have 15% but you’re forced to hold for 6 months, which is not so appealing.
Makes me wish it wasn't so complicated to profit from volatility.
https://moontower.substack.com/p/surfing-volatility
ESPP as arbitrage needs to be after tax. Let's assume a high earner has an opening price @ $100, a 15% discount, and the stock is up to $110. Each share they can arbitrage $25. $15 is ordinary income, and $10 is STCG. After tax it's closer to $17-18.
In this situation they would be purchasing 147 shares and their after tax gain is ~$2600. If the stock is flat ($100) it would turn into a $1.2k after tax gain.
It's free money, and nothing to sneeze at. But there have been times in my life where I'd rather have the extra cashflow / month than the risk free return.
In this situation they would be purchasing 147 shares and their after tax gain is ~$2600. If the stock is flat ($100) it would turn into a $1.2k after tax gain.
It's free money, and nothing to sneeze at. But there have been times in my life where I'd rather have the extra cashflow / month than the risk free return.
The cashflow side is a good point. It wasn't a big problem, but I did run into that a bit with my current job. I got a sizeable raise when I moved, but between a chunk being twice a year bonus payouts and maxing out ESPP, the regular paychecks actually shrunk. Caught me a little off guard.
Ugh. IRS.gov still doesn't have reflected what I'm supposed to owe them when I filed. They said accepted, it's been like 2 weeks, or so. Long since gotten my CA refund. sigh
CA is fast. Irs can be…but someone went firing the new people who are running a lot of the tech.
…
I’m toying with a low effort 2 credit card combo of chase sapphire reserve and chase aeroplan cards. Guess I should make a model for it.
Yeah, I had hoped that for a return that wasn't all that complicated, or that high of incoming, they'd have had most of the automated processes worked out so it'd get through the process in a week or two. Doesn't seem to be the case.
Hm. So if the 2024 bill doesn't show up before April 15th, does that mean I still need to pay my estimate by the 15th?
Mine was filed to refund in bank in 8 days end of Feb. So maybe.
what do you mean by bill? You have to pay anything your return says you owe by April 15th.
So according to the calculations, I'll owe for the Federal. However, the IRS login says "don't know what your balance for 2024 taxes are", even though when I filed it was accepted within a day or two (I forget).
You have to pay whatever your return says you owe regardless of anything else.
So regardless of if they say I owe, I should pay in and trust that they'll correctly match things up? Great...
I would wait almost a month before you start being concerned about it.
The commission check hit my checking account last Friday. It's a bit lighter than the Q4 commission from last year. I checked with our comp team, and it looks like they did not credit an increase in a subsidiary's fees against the parent organization's partial cancellation of a services contract. That kept me below a 90% renewal retention, so I missed out on about $35K in added bonus.
I wrote to the team, opened a case, corrected another small error, and then explained why the affiliate's increase should be added as an offset even though the former account was not in renewal yet. I had an extensive email history and a written proposal linking the reduction in services to adding the other division as an affiliate on the subsidiary contract and more products for their market and workflows.
I track every close, renewal, and cancellation and classify the fees into renewal, uplift, and new business since I get a different amount of comp for each and whether it qualifies for early-in-year deals, early closes to bring them into the quarter, new multiyear contract bonuses, or any other kicker. Some require submitting a ticket to the comp team to mark it for the added comp. We need to file a dispute within 30 days of the commission payment.
I am sure they will do the right thing, but it illustrates the need to check variable comp like a hawk.
I wrote to the team, opened a case, corrected another small error, and then explained why the affiliate's increase should be added as an offset even though the former account was not in renewal yet. I had an extensive email history and a written proposal linking the reduction in services to adding the other division as an affiliate on the subsidiary contract and more products for their market and workflows.
I track every close, renewal, and cancellation and classify the fees into renewal, uplift, and new business since I get a different amount of comp for each and whether it qualifies for early-in-year deals, early closes to bring them into the quarter, new multiyear contract bonuses, or any other kicker. Some require submitting a ticket to the comp team to mark it for the added comp. We need to file a dispute within 30 days of the commission payment.
I am sure they will do the right thing, but it illustrates the need to check variable comp like a hawk.
We've had this discussion before, but wow, are the behavioral incentives in corporate sales bonkers!
Got called a "motherfucker" behind my back by the owner in the executive meeting on Wednesday.
Because our main ERP isn't on the new Hyper-V cluster. Reason for that? Because when we run it in a virtual environment, it sucks for multiple reasons. I took it off virtualized onto dedicated iron years ago for that exact reason, and it was considered the Best Thing Ever when I did.
Oh, and also, he was screaming for my boss (the CFO) to fire me.
I'm going to put it into Hyper-V this weekend, and give them free shrugs. I just don't care anymore; they can eat my shit and hair.
Because our main ERP isn't on the new Hyper-V cluster. Reason for that? Because when we run it in a virtual environment, it sucks for multiple reasons. I took it off virtualized onto dedicated iron years ago for that exact reason, and it was considered the Best Thing Ever when I did.
Oh, and also, he was screaming for my boss (the CFO) to fire me.
I'm going to put it into Hyper-V this weekend, and give them free shrugs. I just don't care anymore; they can eat my shit and hair.
Yikes! Damn. Yeah, transfer it back, and leave it on there when they complain. Have them give you a direct order to move it back. And then also give them "it took X hours to put on Hyper-V, and then take it off Hyper-V, you made me waste Y amount of company time/money".
That does not sound like something that any of the other people involved will care about based on the rest of the interactions.
Executives should all be treated as if they have no hard drive, and that they're running nothing but compute and RAM. That means any interaction you have with them requires you to re-establish context.
The corollary to this is that when an executive is upset about something that has history associated with it, they almost certainly are experiencing Big Feelings
with exactly zero memory of the details behind the situation. It usually isn't personal; it's just how it is when you're pulled in that many directions.
What you want to see paired with this fact is a little self-awareness, but it sounds like that's not the case here. Quite likely this is holding up some other business outcome/priority and it's just another exception that has to be worked around that is frustrating.
The corollary to this is that when an executive is upset about something that has history associated with it, they almost certainly are experiencing Big Feelings
with exactly zero memory of the details behind the situation. It usually isn't personal; it's just how it is when you're pulled in that many directions.What you want to see paired with this fact is a little self-awareness, but it sounds like that's not the case here. Quite likely this is holding up some other business outcome/priority and it's just another exception that has to be worked around that is frustrating.
Yeah lately I'm going on back to back meetings every day, and almost every meeting is a new, unrelated topic.
I'm sure I'm coming off blunt, but I do not have time for long conversations and explanations. What is the objective of the meeting, where are you blocked and why, resolve with action items and next. I hate working that way but I legitimately do not have the time right now on a lot of things.
University provost called me 'an argumentative bastard' once and that's probably the highest my job satisfaction has ever been.
Executives should all be treated as if they have no hard drive, and that they're running nothing but compute and RAM. That means any interaction you have with them requires you to re-establish context.
The corollary to this is that when an executive is upset about something that has history associated with it, they almost certainly are experiencing Big Feelings
What you want to see paired with this fact is a little self-awareness, but it sounds like that's not the case here. Quite likely this is holding up some other business outcome/priority and it's just another exception that has to be worked around that is frustrating.
The local industry term for someone getting that easily distracted by the shiny is "squirrel syndrome".
I had a very satisfying moment a couple days ago where I made some frank observations over Big Feeling statements bemoaning the lack of progress. Like, we just wasted the first 30 minutes of the meeting over things we can't change instead of getting shit done.
The other C-suite exec also in the meeting, who actually does have persistent nonvolatile storage, by the looks had a hard time deciding what he thinks about me calming and matter of factly firing for effect, and not cracking up over it.
I get where the Feelings are coming from, and its a serious problem, but 1) we have it because the person with the Feelings has fucked up, and more importantly 2) the Feelings are getting in the way of unfucking it.
As for it not being personal, that kind of stops working when you're going around threatening to fire people. That's just not an acceptable way of expressing frustration, and I have seen it blow up in spectacular fashion.
"You are fired" means just that without further confirmation, the law doesn't understand "take backsies", and if there were serious negative consequences (contractual, legal, businesswise) over the lack of take-backsies then perhaps you ought to have more self-control than a teenager having a moment.
Executives are, in my experience, almost universally assholes. Cynically speaking, they have to be to reach such a position. You don't reach the top without throwing others under the various buses that come your way, and without smooching up to the assholes already above you.
Maybe all the ones I've dealt with are the exceptions
I've only worked for a few companies in my "corporate career". I've had the dubious pleasure as an analyst doing various executive reporting projects, where you get to see some true colors that aren't featured in the "I'm your nice uncle in our big happy family" company-wide emails. Whatever, I turned down management positions to stay away from them (other than said projects), and make somewhat less money and have far less stress just doing the actual work. Too close to retirement to even want to stray back into that toilet, though of course it sucks not having a voice in anything (while you watch the same damn mistakes being made project after project). Price you pay
Maybe all the ones I've dealt with are the exceptions
I've only worked for a few companies in my "corporate career". I've had the dubious pleasure as an analyst doing various executive reporting projects, where you get to see some true colors that aren't featured in the "I'm your nice uncle in our big happy family" company-wide emails. Whatever, I turned down management positions to stay away from them (other than said projects), and make somewhat less money and have far less stress just doing the actual work. Too close to retirement to even want to stray back into that toilet, though of course it sucks not having a voice in anything (while you watch the same damn mistakes being made project after project). Price you pay
My brother in arms! HUGSWhatever, I turned down management positions to stay away from them (other than said projects), and make somewhat less money and have far less stress just doing the actual work. Too close to retirement to even want to stray back into that toilet, though of course it sucks not having a voice in anything (while you watch the same damn mistakes being made project after project). Price you pay
(People) management is a vast gulf away from being a capable expert and Getting Shit Done. I don't want do deal with the (people) bullshit. I want to (and do) Know Things and Guide Things.
Unfortunately, from my perspective - the people who step into those management roles far too often are even worse than an empty seat.
Very hard to hire for, unfortantely, much harder than most (but not all; software architecture for example will either make or break your project, but you'll only really know in 12-36 months what will be the case) individual contributors. because all the work is very squish, with uncertain outcomes, and can often only be accurately assessed in aggregate and a postierori. Even at a relatively low level.
Consider someone responsible for a team delivering a Thing by a certain date, which is a responsibility that companies might put on either line or project management. The Thing looks like it might be late based on aggregate indicators, but based on quality indicators and the nature of the work already done vs. still open it might also either fit just fine, or at least be in reasonable quality with further work being done after release.
Do you do the save thing and go to your stakeholders and tell you that Thing will or might be late? What are the organizational costs of a delay that will be unnecessary, or a delay that turns out to be unnecessary? How do you feel about the possibility of a 'reasonable quality' initial release, and cost of rework/vs gain of market entry as planned? ...
Those are all judgment calls where the person making them can only be assessed for a posteriori and in aggregate, because if you move ahead after a single judgement call that didn't work out you will get what you don't want: A culture where no one will take responsibility, either outright or by counterproductive behaviour of not only including some buffers but enough buffers to stack them to Mars and back.
(Agile doesn't really help you avoid those judgement calls either; what it can do is to help you to lower the stakes of those calls, and make them with a better information basis, and give you more decision points.)
The higher up the stack it goes the less squishy it becomes, because both your information basis and your means of influencing outcomes become more diffuse and less direct.
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To paraphrase the George Carlin bit, "Look at how big an asshole the average executive is and realize that over half the executives are even bigger assholes."