Federal Reserve chair says decline in workers' share of profits 'very troubling'
The allocation of profits in startups, at least, feels... problematic.<p>I was the #2 engineer hire when I was hired five years ago. Since then, we haven&#x27;t become super successful -- yet -- but we&#x27;re at least at breakeven. We have three engineers and we&#x27;re working on a huge new project that hopefully will really grow the company.<p>I have 1.8% equity.<p>Sometimes when I&#x27;m working late or working on the weekend, which is often, I wonder: Is this really worth it?<p>I&#x27;m totally fine with taking a pay cut to build something new, in order to have the chance at making life changing money. But at the equity I have, we&#x27;d need to be quite successful in order to get that.<p>The VCs who funded our seed and series A (the only funds we&#x27;ve raised) will see the lion&#x27;s share of the profits. Emotionally, that feels odd. We&#x27;ve thrown a significant percentage of our lives, and they&#x27;ve only thrown in money -- and a pretty small amount of it, really. I know it&#x27;s supposed to make sense from a financial perspective or whatever, but <i>emotionally</i> it doesn&#x27;t feel fair.<p>But hey I guess it worked, I have what feels like a small percentage and yet I&#x27;m throwing everything I have at this company. I&#x27;m likely an outlier, though. I suspect that if VCs and founders gave employees a bigger piece of the pie, they&#x27;d have a much more motivated workforce.