When I got multiple startup job offers, I realized how hard it was to project out a realistic value behind the equity. Guessing future valuations, dealing with dilution, and running through endless scenarios was a headache—so I built Comparator.
Comparator is a simple, free, open-source tool to help you cut through the complexity of startup compensation. Quickly see what your equity might actually be worth, factor in dilution, and easily compare your offers side by side. It’s completely free, no signups, your data never leaves the browser.
While I think it’s good advice to live as if the equity is worth zero, treating all equity as if its worth nothing, seems a bit over-reductionist when equity packages can routinely be worth millions of dollars.
Obviously it’s a crapshoot and should never be seen as a guarantee, I think treating it as zero is bit too far on the opposite extreme.
You'd be remiss if the company is growing and has an IPO schedule. The uncertainty over equity reduces over time. Some people hop from pre-IPO company to pre-IPO company.
I am too dumb for this. I get a salary and maybe a bonus. I never worked at a company that gave stock or options. When I do I will share the offers to someone that understands this. But I will most likely choose the company that shares my values and ignore the payout (unless it's realky a bad pay)
Even when I had multiple startup offers, "Likelihood of becoming rich" was only one column in a 13 column ranking. I ranked them in sorted order on each column, added up their ranks across columns, and accepted the one with the lowest sum of ranks. I have done this for every of my jobs and it's fine. I add or change columns each time. It has led me (eventually) to my current job which is far and away my favorite.
I kept former offers in the ranking as well, as a sort of "secretary problem" running solution.
Also, they overlap? I was recently given two days to decide on an offer after a ten week interview process. I took it and dropped out of other interviews.
Sign the first offer, continue interviewing, if you end up switching companies just write a nice email to your recruiter/manager explaining the situation. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that it’s happened.
If they refuse to give you more time (they often will, if you demand it) then just accept the offer and keep interviewing during the interim before your start date.
This implies everyone gets multiple offers. When I had 2yrs of exp. I had one company that was confident about me, the rest were kind of trying to find reasons not to hire me (except exp)
For the first interview that you get an offer, what exactly do you tell them to keep them from moving on to someone else?
Most don't extend employment offers out for months in my experience, or at least they really try to get you to agree off the bat. I imagine someone job searching is getting an interview once a week or so. Several times, I've had delays of weeks to months after just submitting an application to get the interview. So how do you just have multiple offers to juggle at any one time?
My last job search (a few months ago) I had 9 concurrent interviews going on before I had to start cancelling them and ended up with at least 3 offers before I started flat out rejecting other teams.
If you've kept up in the AI space the demand is insane. Though, ironically, I ended up taking a classical statistical modeling position because the team seemed great (and I can't resist a good, non-trivial modeling problem).
There's some minor content overflow in the x axis. I think it wouldn't hurt to tweak the max width of the page content as I feel like it's a bit too much right now. Also not sure if I'm a fan of the animation you have going on with the quotes. Feels tacky.
Very nice visualization, and super useful to learn more about how stocks and vestings work.
And that puts an exact number on the price of your soul, and at which point you'll go and start working for a company that doesn't share your set of values
Readit News
Comparator is a simple, free, open-source tool to help you cut through the complexity of startup compensation. Quickly see what your equity might actually be worth, factor in dilution, and easily compare your offers side by side. It’s completely free, no signups, your data never leaves the browser.
Check out the app here: https://comparator-one.vercel.app
Check out the code here: https://github.com/DevonPeroutky/comparator
Zero. Equity is a bonus in case things work out. But for the purpose of deciding on offers - zero.
Obviously it’s a crapshoot and should never be seen as a guarantee, I think treating it as zero is bit too far on the opposite extreme.
Even when I had multiple startup offers, "Likelihood of becoming rich" was only one column in a 13 column ranking. I ranked them in sorted order on each column, added up their ranks across columns, and accepted the one with the lowest sum of ranks. I have done this for every of my jobs and it's fine. I add or change columns each time. It has led me (eventually) to my current job which is far and away my favorite.
I kept former offers in the ranking as well, as a sort of "secretary problem" running solution.
Dead Comment
IANAL, the above isn’t legal advice, yada yada.
Most don't extend employment offers out for months in my experience, or at least they really try to get you to agree off the bat. I imagine someone job searching is getting an interview once a week or so. Several times, I've had delays of weeks to months after just submitting an application to get the interview. So how do you just have multiple offers to juggle at any one time?
If you've kept up in the AI space the demand is insane. Though, ironically, I ended up taking a classical statistical modeling position because the team seemed great (and I can't resist a good, non-trivial modeling problem).
Loved the initial loading animation. You should also launch this on Peerlist Launchpad, many devs gonna love it.