hm8

Thank you, I'll address it right away!

I wonder how many innovations/systems are lost to history due to people changing incentives OR not understanding the depth of how incentives are structured. Without this open letter, it'd be hard to hear the other side. Most likely the changes would have been adopted...

Reading this encouraged me to think critically about things I work on.

At this scale/valuation of the company, it's probably a bad idea but hard to know at the time. My understanding of US tax laws and options is that this sort of behavior is what you want for early stage startups. You allow early exercise, restricted vesting with the upside of paying no income tax now, only LTCG on vesting (+liquidity event), and potentially QSBS tax exemption if you joined early enough and the startup does well.

Their storefront feels dated and retro — probably why it feels something for older tastes. But their lollipops are amazing. I go there just for them. Just today, I bought a box of chocolate-caramel.

I hope that, in addition to, improving their recruiting funnel and brand value; this effort serves to improve diversity in tech. We have talked about tech companies throwing their hands in the air to encourage college admissions rate from under-represented classes. Hopefully, this move to go down the funnel leads to that improvement!

It's interesting to see one of the basis of defense is promises made during offer stage. Anecdotally speaking, and I am not remotely close to Hall's position or responsibilities (an engineer) and in the past, the hiring team has always led me to believe that the non-competes are a standard clause and are not likely to be enforced.

On a separate note, anybody knows if Google would help with legal defense of Hall or ignore this as a private matter?

I can only imagine how much it sucks to be laid off and what a difficult decision it must be for Airbnb executives.

To me, the severance and exit benefits do seem to strike an employee friendly tone. Kudos to the leadership to striking a good balance on keeping the business alive and doing right by their people.