Little silly to say "I revoked $1M worth" since the price paid for each certificate includes unlimited renewals to fix problems like he identified. They are still worth $1M despite everything he did, they just have different private keys now and slightly improved data.
Maybe a better title would be, "Humans not 100% reliable about ensuring accurate information stored within thousands of data records, despite such accuracy kinda being the whole point."
I know for a fact that at least one of those certs was replaced with a DV cert - once the team in question had to replace it, they realized there was no point in replacing it with an EV since the browsers are removing the EV UI anyway.[0] I'd bet that a meaningful proportion of the certs in question are similarly being replaced with DV.
If you don't like the terms of the shareholders agreement, then you don't have to buy the (private equity) shares. But if you buy the shares and sign the agreement, I don't see why the directors should honour illegitimate share transfers you attempt to make in the future.
All contracts have consideration. If the consideration for the agreement that all my assets are Apple's is $1 billion USD, then sure I would happily comply, rather than risk voiding my contract.
More seriously: people should comply with the agreements that they sign. Don't sign an agreement that says all of your assets are actually Apple's if you're not happy with it. Read all of the fine print and don't be surprised later.
Don't buy stock in a privacy company if you're not happy with the constraints on it. One of the common key differences between private and public companies is that you can't sell or transfer stock in private companies without their approval. You know that when buying it initially, or when agreeing to receive it as compensation.
There are legitimate reasons why private companies don't want their stock to be transferred willy-nilly. For one, it makes the cap table larger and more complex, which complicates further funding or purchase agreements. Two, if the cap table grows too large, then the company may become subject to onerous SEC regulations that are more appropriate for public companies (but without receiving the corresponding benefits). Three, since shareholders are entitled to certain information about the company, private companies limit ownership so that they're not obligated to share this information with people they do not trust. There are probably more reasons.
> More seriously: people should comply with the agreements that they sign. Don't sign an agreement that says all of your assets are actually Apple's if you're not happy with it. Read all of the fine print and don't be surprised later.
You have read every single word of all the TOS you ever signed? I find that very hard to believe.
> Don't buy stock in a privacy company if you're not happy with the constraints on it. One of the common key differences between private and public companies is that you can't sell or transfer stock in private companies without their approval. You know that when buying it initially, or when agreeing to receive it as compensation.
If we talk about the letter of the law, then you don't need to sell the stock, you can sell futures of it at your own compliance. The company can't prevent you from doing that by letter of the law. But the SEC can. The contract is only enforcible in practical terms because as an employee or investor you are disallowed from making any legal claim about the stocks you are entitled to.
Also, the argument that it is 'legal' is entirely a different thing. I never mentioned legality, I said ridiculous. Its not a moral, economic or practical argument to say that something is 'legal'. Saying something is legal is one of the lowest forms of defense for an action. Its saying that the only purpose of it is that they cant put you to jail for doing it.
> There are legitimate reasons why private companies don't want their stock to be transferred willy-nilly. For one, it makes the cap table larger and more complex, which complicates further funding or purchase agreements. Two, if the cap table grows too large, then the company may become subject to onerous SEC regulations that are more appropriate for public companies (but without receiving the corresponding benefits). Three, since shareholders are entitled to certain information about the company, private companies limit ownership so that they're not obligated to share this information with people they do not trust. There are probably more reasons.
Very nice, but there is a much more important reason why companies want to not be able to sell off shares: they benefit economically directly because of it. Because the owners get the shares back when people dont buy them, and they have information asymmetry with the employees. AS an employee you have a lot less information.
If employees could sell their stocks willy nilly, every employee that leaves a startup and doesnt want to buy stock to keep would sell them in the open market, which would dilute the value of companies big time while making employees richer.
Why would you sign it if you didn't intend to "happily comply"? Do you often walk into contract negotiations with little intention of holding up your end of the deal?
I have never read any terms of service ever, nor I am a lawyer to understand the ramifications of it. Do you have a lawyer on retainer to read all the TOS you ever signed?
Your hypothetical deal with Apple will get thrown out of court for two reasons:
- It's lop-sided, as in they get something for nothing, comparatively speaking. Courts don't see such contracts to be valid.
- It's understood that users mostly don't read ToS, and instead rely on their general understanding of what ToS may contain, plus or minus some deviation. Anything that's way outside reasonable deviations fails the "meeting of the minds" test, and is also held invalid.
The shareholder agreement is a different matter. The investor most certainly is expected to read the agreement, and they do. And both parties are exchanging plausibly valuable things - stock for money.
I'm not a lawyer, this is not a legal advice. Seek professional advice before taking any action based on what you read.
Do you have a lawyer on retainer to read all the TOS you ever signed?
A click-through TOS? No, duh; you knew that when you asked it. But a shareholder's agreement that I put pen to paper for my signature, which is the topic at hand? Umm, the answer to that one would be "yes".
He just got unlucky. It's always luck of the draw with job interviews. Just like those poker players that say they should have won the hand.
I'd like to try this in an interview: how would you re-root a binary tree such that the ordering of the elements remains the same, but the root node of the tree changes.
+1 imo luck plays larger role than most people would like to admit. Particularly at places like Google who just throw their CS bingo bonanza at you, but at places that interview properly too.
I don't mind the promoted Triplebyte ad I see at the top of my reddit landing page. I'm subscribed to r/git and r/programming; I suspect it's coming from my r/programming subscription. My ad-blocker is enabled for reddit, but the Triplebyte promoted ad still gets through. I guess it's not really an ad but a promoted topic. It even has the upvote/downvote buttons. It's been there for probably the last month.
(I work at Triplebyte.) Thanks, that's great to hear! It works for us too -- we can easily measure that we've created a lot of great career opportunities for engineers who came to us via the r/programming promoted post.
I would do a small friends & family round pre-revenue. E.g., 8 friends and family @ 12.5K each = 100K. I don't mind if my success makes my friends & family some money.
But I'll sure feel bad if I take their money and lose everything. Perhaps that would be motivating...
(Note: where I live (BC, Canada), the provincial government offers a refundable 30% tax credit for investments like this, so if I did lose everything, friends & family would only be out 70K).
This seems like terrible advice. I'm highly against borrowing money or receiving investment money from friends / family. The risk simply isn't worth the reward.
I think it's better to structure it as an equity investment, and to really make it clear to friends & family that they are buying a lottery ticket that will probably lose.
Also, make sure the investors are people where you wouldn't be uncomfortable if they saw your company's annual shareholder reports every year for the next 20 years - both in the failure and mad success scenarios. An ex-spouse or potential ex-spouse perhaps not a good choice.
This is really out of touch with the majority of friends and family where I come from. Sound advice if you're from privilege I guess. (Not meant to be rude)
I'm a 30+ year old software-engineer in Vancouver, BC. And there's a housing bubble. My friends are mostly also senior developers / software architects / managers etc.
I wish I could do something like that but my friends and family are not accredited investors, even if they have $10k to give. From my understanding of securities law and compliance it really isn't possible.
If you're already a grad student you can usually take any undergrad course at your institution for free. It will slow down your progress on your graduate degree, but you might as well do it right if it's what you really want.
Maybe a better title would be, "Humans not 100% reliable about ensuring accurate information stored within thousands of data records, despite such accuracy kinda being the whole point."