[kristov]

I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. With Amazon obviously the risk of that is low. But for many new companies the risk is very high. Therefore the payoffs are also high, to attract people to take the risk. Where I sympathize with your view is that sometimes an investment risk is taken, and the payout far exceeds the risk by any reasonable and sane margin. So you get investors spreading their risk across many ventures, on the hope that the one successful one is so successful that it pays the losses of the failed ones. But yea, this system is not really working for the vast majority of people and that is a tragedy.

[martin-t]

> you get a regular paycheck

No you don't. That's exactly the point. Once you get fired, there are no longer any paychecks.

Meanwhile you have spent a limited resource you can't get back while investors have spent an unlimited resource they can always make more of.

And that even ignores the bottom line that people who get fired might lose their homes or not be able to feed their families. Tell me which investors risk so much that they become homeless if they lose the money.

---

The bottom line if you need a certain amount of money (an absolute value) to survive.

1) Workers get 100% of that from the 1 company they work for. Maybe they can work for 2 companies part time if they are lucky. But losing even 50% of their income hits their bottom line severely. Meanwhile, investors can (as you say) optimize their risk so they are pretty safe.

2) And workers often spend a majority of their income on this bottom line, not being able to save much, let alone amass enough to invest to a meaningful degree. Investors (people who already have so much money they can risk a significant hunk of it) can lose a significant chunk of it and still be comfortable able to afford rent or pay the bills.

In fact, they often don't pay rent because they could just buy their home (something increasingly difficult for workers). Imagine if these rich assholes had to spend a third or half of their income, just to have a roof above their head.

They'd do everything to change the system, in fact, they do exactly that now by evading taxes.

[pjc50]

> As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.

I would like people who cannot distinguish between an income stream and a capital value to learn what an "annuity" is.

Employees have very significant financial risk tied to the company because it's their main source of income. In America, there may even be significant health risks because health insurance is tied to the employer for baffling tax reasons.

Not to mention that in many startups, the employees are literally investors: they hold stock and options!

> So you get investors spreading their risk across many ventures

The employee version of this is called "overemployment", but it's quite risky.

[JustExAWS]

I have been an employee for 30 years across 10 jobs - one of which was Amazon from 2020-2023. I never once considered my “main source of income” my current job. My main source of income was my ability to get a job. I always stayed ready to look for a job at a moments notice and it has never taken me more than a month to get a job when I was looking.

In fact, ten days after getting my “take severance package and leave immediately or try to work through a PIP (and fail)” meeting, I had three full time offers. I’m no special snowflake. I keep my resume updated, my network strong, skills in sync with the market, 9-12 months in savings in the bank.

Whether you are an enterprise developer or BigTech in the US you are on average making twice the median income in your area. There is usually no reason for you not to be stacking cash.

And equity in startups are statistically worthless and illiquid - unlike the RSUs you get in public companies that you can sell as soon as they vest.

As far as an “annuity”, you should be taking advantage that excess cash you get and saving it. But why would you want an “annuity” based on the performance of a specific company? I set my preference to “sell immediately” when my RSUs in AMZN vested and diversified.

Fortunately after the ACA, you can get insurance on the private market regardless of preexisting condition (I lost my job once before the ACA. It was a nightmare) or pay for COBRA. Remember that savings I said everyone should have?

[getpokedagain]

> I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.

I would challenge you to change your perspective on this. The average employee is likely to be worse in the case of a failed company than an investor. The investor may lose funds sure but the employee:

- loss of income which they live off of while the investor likely has other money remaining as they are rich.

- loss of access to good health coverage in the USA

- potential opportunity costs in the form of learning the wrong things to support the now defunct company ie learned rust but now we all code in AI tools

- potential opportunity costs implied in aging. Few want a 60 y/o engineer but a 60 y/o investor is great.

In short while the investor can lose objectively more money the worker loses more relatively.

[reassess_blind]

Everything you said is true, but the relevant risk in the equation is objective risk, not relative risk.

[kristov]

Oh I agree with you. I don't live in the US, but in a country that has a very high progressive tax rate. I am taxed about 50% of my income currently. But I gladly pay it because I like to live in a safe country with strong government programs and a great healthcare system. It is also very difficult to fire an employee here. Companies generally have to pay people to leave, and this can be a year salary upwards. But I do sympathize with people in the US, even if the "average" lifestyle experience is higher, because a lot of people seem to be struggling there.

[ericmay]

Also doesn’t Amazon and many other tech companies give out RSUs as part of compensation for corporate employees? Obviously not all, but the OP’s complaint is, in my view, not entirely fair to levy at Amazon specifically.

[martin-t]

What does the R stand for?

This is not the same. It is similar, it gives the veneer of meritocracy and ownership but it's not the same.

Compare how much ownership per unit of work each person has. In fact, only one side knows the company's financial status so it cannot even be a fair negotiation, let alone fair outcome.

---

In a society which claims that everyone is equal and in which everyone lives roughly the same amount of time, the fair distribution of ownership is according to how much of their limited time they spent building the thing.

You can admit people are not equal and then take both time and skill into account.

Still wouldn't be close to the level of inequality we have today: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-road-not-taken-is-guarante...

[cool_dude85]

>As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company

Is your livelihood, housing, ability to put food on the table for your family etc. not a risk by your understanding? Or are you only willing to accept certain types of financial risk as "risk"?

Here's an illustrative question: John Q. Billionaire owns shares in a passive index fund such that he practically has the same exposure to Amazon's stock price as if he owned $10 million in stock. I will potentially be homeless if I lose my 45k per year job at Amazon. Who has more risk?

[malvim]

This drives me nuts. You move to another city, risk your livelihood on a new job that you don’t know if is gonna work out for you. Your kids go to a new school, your partner has to either move to find a new job, or make it work long distance for a while… Your whole life changes on what is essentially a bet, you have no security whatsoever. And people say the risk is not yours.

Also - and I think this is the main thing - you have NO SAY in any of it after you sign that contract. An owner DECIDES to close shop. To fire people. You risk being fired for whatever reason comes to the mind of your boss, manager, director, owner.

But yeah, no risk. No risk at all.

[kristov]

If your a billionaire and you invest in index funds, the risk of becoming homeless is really low, sure. The system works in such a way that the more money you have the easier it is to make more money. So if your stuck at the bottom, your really stuck.

And I believe there is a huge shift of wealth going on, to a very small number of insanely rich people. And that is a very big problem.

[DrScientist]

If being a founder/VC was truly more risky than being an employee - you'd see more homeless VC's and founders than employees, not just more millionaires - ie a spread either side.

Sure sometimes founders and angel investors take big risks - however often the money invested is other people's money!

So if you have a VC funded start up - the VC has persuaded other people to give them money they will invest on their behalf, and while there is a strong alignment with upside and VC renumeration - they still charge management fees come win or lose - and risk is spread across the fund.

Founders stock options are often aligned with VC's such that often they win with certain exit scenarios when the rank and file with ordinary options do not.

Under those scenarios I'm not sure either the VC's or the founders are really taking much more risk than the employees - as I'm not sure you see that many homeless VC's.

The real point here is that people who take the initiative ( to set up a company for example ) set the rules, and also often configure the rules to favour themselves - it's as simple as that. Isn't pretending otherwise window dressing/self-justification from people taking advantage of other people's passiveness?

[DrScientist]

Same argument applies to investors.

Isn't it the same as the house in roulette - sure each spin the house is taking risk - but if the game is structured so the odds are in your favour - you are taking less risk than the customer.

It comes down to who is setting the rules of the game.

[SecretDreams]

> But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return.

Do such risks truly exist for modern mega corps? Do we even still think the underlying stocks of these companies trend with performance only?

Your sentiment comes from a wholly different investment era, where investing was primarily done by professionals and ETFs did not exist.

[motbus3]

This is unfortunately true. Accusing a company for maximizing profit is naive. There is a structural problem on taxation Vs how much the company contributes back to society.

Morally speaking, your sentiment is right with most of us I think but asking for a company is asking for a thing, like asking for a building or a chair.

Earning more while exploring more than contributing back is unhealthy in any measurement of time. Back then, companies would have schools, universities and whatever to sustain the community they want to build. They would build roads, renovate public spaces and contribute to private transport and all of that apart from taxes. Now they invest on their own charities, which sometimes is quite hard to validate how much money goes in to where due to the conflict of interest and the possibility of fraud.

[gruez]

>Earning more while exploring more than contributing back is unhealthy in any measurement of time. Back then, companies would have schools, universities and whatever to sustain the community they want to build. They would build roads, renovate public spaces and contribute to private transport and all of that apart from taxes.

Sounds like company towns, which were derided for other reasons.